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HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

Boston  and  New  York 

THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 


THE  FACE  OF  THE 
FIELDS 


BY 


DALLAS  LORE  SHARP 

AUTHOR  OF  "  WILD  LIFE  NEAR  HOME,"  "  ROOF  AND 
MEADOW,"  AND  "THE  LAY  OF  THE  LAND" 


3?4<7 

BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK  ' 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
(Cfre  ftiuerjsi&e  pre^  Cambridge 
1911 


S°H 


COPYRIGHT,  191 1,  BY  DALLAS  LORE  SHARP 
ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  March  iqii 


TO  MY  GOOD  FRIEND 

HINCKLEY   GILBERT   MITCHELL 

HONEST  SCHOLAR 


CONTENTS 

I.  THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS  i 

II.  TURTLE  EGGS  FOR  AGASSIZ           .         .  27 

III.  THE  EDGE  OF  NIGHT           .         .         .  .57 

IV.  THE  SCARCITY  OF  SKUNKS   .         .         .  81 
V.  THE  NATURE-WRITER        .          .         .  .111 

VI.  JOHN  BURROUGHS 141 

VII.  HUNTING  THE  SNOW 177 

VIII.  THE  CLAM   FARM 193 

IX.  THE  COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING  .  217 


All  but  two  of  these  papers  made  their  first  appearance  in  The 
Atlantic  Monthly.  "The  Nature- Writer "  was  first  printed  in 
The  Outlook  and  "  Hunting  the  Snow"  in  The  Youth's  Companion. 


I 

THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 


THE   FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

here  was  a  swish  of  wings,  a  flash 
of  gray,  a  cry  of  pain,  a  squawking, 
cowering,  scattering  flock  of  hens, 
a  weakly  fluttering  pullet,  and  yon- 
der, swinging  upward  into  the  Oc- 
tober sky,  a  marsh  hawk,  buoyant  and  gleaming 
silvery  in  the  sun.  Over  the  trees  he  beat,  circled 
once,  and  disappeared. 

The  hens  were  still  flapping  for  safety  in  a 
dozen  directions,  but  the  gray  harrier  had  gone. 
A  bolt  of  lightning  could  not  have  dropped  so 
unannounced,  could  not  have  vanished  so  com- 
pletely, could  scarcely  have  killed  so  quickly.  I 
ran  to  the  pullet,  but  found  her  dead.  The  har- 
rier's stroke,  delivered  with  fearful  velocity,  had 
laid  head  and  neck  open  as  with  a  keen  knife. 
Yet  a  fraction  slower  and  he  would  have  missed, 
for  the  pullet  caught  the  other  claw  on  her  wing. 
The  gripping  talons  slipped  off  the  long  quills, 
and  the  hawk  swept  on  without  his  quarry.  He 
dared   not  come  back   for  it  at  my  feet;   and 


4      THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

so  with  a  single  turn  above  the  woods  he  was 
gone. 

The  scurrying  hens  stopped  to  look  about 
them.  There  was  nothing  in  the  sky  to  see.  They 
stood  still  and  silent  a  moment.  The  rooster 
chucked.  Then  one  by  one  they  turned  back  into 
the  open  pasture.  A  huddled  group  under  the 
hen-yard  fence  broke  up  and  came  out  with  the 
others.  Death  had  flashed  among  them,  but  had 
missed  them.  Fear  had  come,  but  had  gone. 
Within  two  minutes  —  in  less  time  —  from  the 
fall  of  the  stroke,  every  hen  in  the  flock  was  intent 
at  her  scratching,  or  as  intently  chasing  the  gray 
grasshoppers  over  the  pasture. 

Yet,  as  they  scratched,  the  high-stepping  cock 
would  frequently  cast  up  his  eye  toward  the  tree- 
tops  ;  would  sound  his  alarum  at  the  flight  of  a 
robin ;  and  if  a  crow  came  over,  he  would  shout 
and  dodge  and  start  to  run.  But  instantly  the 
shadow  would  pass,  and  instantly  chanticleer — 

He  loketh  as  it  were  a  grim  leoun, 
And  on  his  toos  he  rometh  up  and  doun; 


Thus  roial,  as  a  prince  is  in  an  halle. 

He  wasn't  afraid.    Cautious,  alert,  watchful  he 


THE   FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS       5 

was,  but  not  fearful.  No  shadow  of  dread  hangs 
dark  and  ominous  across  the  sunshine  of  his  pas- 
ture. Shadows  come  —  like  a  flash ;  and  like  a 
flash  they  vanish  away. 

We  cannot  go  far  into  the  fields  without  sight- 
ing the  hawk  and  the  snake,  the  very  shapes  of 
Death.  The  dread  Thing,  in  one  form  or  another, 
moves  everywhere,  down  every  wood-path  and 
pasture-lane,  through  the  black  close  waters  of  the 
mill-pond,  out  under  the  open  of  the  winter  sky, 
night  and  day,  and  every  day,  the  four  seasons 
through.  I  have  seen  the  still  surface  of  a  pond 
break  suddenly  with  a  swirl,  and  flash  a  hundred 
flecks  of  silver  into  the  light,  as  the  minnows  leap 
from  the  jaws  of  the  pike.  Then  a  loud  rattle,  a 
streak  of  blue,  a  splash  at  the  centre  of  the  swirl, 
and  I  see  the  pike,  twisting  and  bending  in  the 
beak  of  the  kingfisher.  The  killer  is  killed ;  but 
at  the  mouth  of  the  nest-hole  in  the  steep  sand- 
bank, swaying  from  a  root  in  the  edge  of  the  turf 
above,  hangs  the  black  snake,  the  third  killer,  and 
the  belted  kingfisher,  dropping  the  pike,  darts  off 
with  a  cryM  have  been  afield  at  times  when  one 
tragedy  has  followed  another  in  such  rapid  and 
continuous  succession  as  to  put  a  whole  shining, 


6       THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

singing,  blossoming  world  under  a  pall.  Every- 
thing has  seemed  to  cower,  skulk,  and  hide,  to 
run  as  if  pursued.  There  was  no  peace,  no  stirring 
of  small  life,  not  even  in  the  quiet  of  the  deep 
pines;  for  here  a  hawk  would  be  nesting,  or  a 
snake  would  be  sleeping,  or  I  would  hear  the 
passing  of  a  fox,  see  perhaps  his  keen  hungry  face 
an  instant  as  he  halted,  winding  me. 

Fox  and  snake  and  hawk  are  real,  but  not  the 
absence  of  peace  and  joy  —  except  within  my  own 
breast.  There  is  struggle  and  pain  and  death  in 
the  woods,  and  there  is  fear  also,  but  the  fear  does 
not  last  long;  it  does  not  haunt  and  follow  and 
terrify ;  it  has  no  being,  no  substance,  no  continu- 
ance. The  shadow  of  the  swiftest  scudding  cloud 
is  not  so  fleeting  as  this  shadow  in  the  woods, 
this  Fear.  The  lowest  of  the  animals  seem  capable 
of  feeling  it ;  yet  the  very  highest  of  them  seem 
incapable  of  dreading  it ;  for  them  Fear  is  not  of 
the  imagination,  but  of  the  sight,  and  of  the  pass- 
ing moment. 

The  present  only  toucheth  thee  ! 
It  does  more,  it  throngs  him — our  fellow  mortal 
of  the  stubble  field,  the  cliff,  and  the  green  sea. 
Into  the  present  is  lived  the  whole  of  his  life  — 


THE   FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS       7 

none  of  it  is  left  to  a  storied  past,  none  sold  to  a 
mortgaged  future.  And  the  whole  of  this  life  is 
action;  and  the  whole  of  this  action  is  joy.  The 
moments  of  fear  in  an  animal's  life  are  moments 
of  reaction,  negative,  vanishing.  Action  and  joy 
are  constant,  the  joint  laws  of  all  animal  life,  of 
all  nature,  from  the  shining  stars  that  sing  together, 
to  the  roar  of  a  bitter  northeast  storm  across  these 
wintry  fields. 

We  shall  get  little  rest  and  healing  out  of  na- 
ture until  we  have  chased  this  phantom  Fear  into 
the  dark  of  the  moon.  It  is  a  most  difficult  drive. 
The  pursued  too  often  turns  pursuer,  and  chases 
us  back  into  our  burrows,  where  there  is  nothing 
but  the  dark  to  make  us  afraid.  If  every  time  a 
bird  cries  in  alarm,  a  mouse  squeaks  with  pain, 
or  a  rabbit  leaps  in  fear  from  beneath  our  feet, 
we,  too,  leap  and  run,  dodging  the  shadow  as  if 
it  were  at  our  own  heels,  then  we  shall  never  get 
farther  toward  the  open  fields  than  Chuchundra, 
the  muskrat,  gets  toward  the  middle  of  the  bun- 
galow floor.  We  shall  always  creep  around  by 
the  wall,  whimpering. 

But  there  is  no  such  thing  as  fear  out  of  doors. 
There  was,  there  will  be ;  you  may  see  it  for  an 


8       THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

instant  on  your  walk  to-day,  or  think  you  see  it ; 
but  there  are  the  birds  singing  as  before,  and  as 
before  the  red  squirrel,  under  cover  of  large  words, 
is  prying  into  your  purposes.  The  universal  cho- 
rus of  nature  is  never  stilled.  This  part,  or  that, 
may  cease  for  a  moment,  for  a  season  it  may  be, 
only  to  let  some  other  part  take  up  the  strain ;  as 
the  winter's  deep  bass  voices  take  it  from  the  soft 
lips  of  the  summer,  and  roll  it  into  thunder,  until 
the  naked  hills  seem  to  rock  to  the  measures  of 
the  song. 

So  must  we  listen  to  the  winter  winds,  to  the 
whistle  of  the  soaring  hawk,  to  the  cry  of  the 
trailing  hounds. 

I  have  had  more  than  one  hunter  grip  me  ex- 
citedly, and  with  almost  a  command  bid  me  hear 
the  music  of  the  baying  pack.  There  are  hollow 
halls  in  the  swamps  that  lie  to  the  east  and  north 
and  west  of  me,  that  catch  up  the  cry  of  the  fox 
hounds,  that  blend  it,  mellow  it,  round  it,  and 
roll  it,  rising  and  falling  over  the  meadows  these 
autumn  nights  in  great  globes  of  sound,  as  pure 
and  sweet  as  the  pearly  notes  of  the  wood  thrush 
rolling  around  their  silver  basin  in  the  summer 
dusk. 


THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS       9 

It  is  a  different  kind  of  music  when  the  pack 
breaks  into  the  open  on  the  warm  trail:  a  chorus 
then  of  individual  tongues  singing  the  ecstasy  of 
pursuit.  My  blood  leaps;  the  natural  primitive 
wild  thing  of  muscle  and  nerve  and  instinct  within 
me  slips  its  leash,  and  on  past  with  the  pack  it 
drives,  the  scent  of  the  trail  single  and  sweet  in  its 
nostrils,  a  very  fire  in  its  blood,  motion,  motion, 
motion  in  its  bounding  muscles,  and  in  its  being 
a  mighty  music,  spheric  and  immortal,  a  carol, 
chant  and  paean,  nature's  "unjarred  chime,"  — 

The  fair  music  that  all  creatures  made 
To  their  great  Lord,  whose  love  their  motions  swayed 
In  perfect  diapason,  whilst  they  stood 
In  first  obedience,  and  their  state  of  good. 

But  what  about  the  fox  and  his  share  in  this 
gloria*?  It  is  a  solemn  music  to  him,  certainly, 
loping  wearily  on  ahead ;  but  what  part  has  he  in 
the  chorus?  No  part,  perhaps,  unless  we  grimly 
call  him  its  conductor.  But  the  point  is  the  cho- 
rus, that  it  never  ceases,  the  hounds  at  this  mo- 
ment, not  the  fox,  in  the  leading  role. 

"  But  the  chorus  ceases  for  me,"  you  say.  "  My 
heart  is  with  the  poor  fox."  So  is  mine,  and  mine 
is  with  the  dogs  too.  Many  a  night  I  have  bayed 


io     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

with  the  pack,  and  as  often,  oftener,  I  think,  I 
have  loped  and  dodged  and  doubled  with  the  fox, 
pitting  limb  against  limb,  lung  against  lung,  wit 
against  wit,  and  always  escaping.  More  than  once, 
in  the  warm  moonlight  of  the  early  fall,  I  have  led 
them  on  and  on,  spurring  their  lagging  muscles 
with  a  sight  of  my  brush,  on  and  on,  through  the 
moonlit  night,  through  the  day,  on  into  the  moon 
again,  and  on  until  —  only  the  stir  of  my  own 
footsteps  has  followed  me.  Then  doubling  once 
more,  creeping  back  a  little  upon  my  track,  I 
have  looked  at  my  pursuers,  silent  and  stiff  upon 
the  trail,  and,  ere  the  echo  of  their  cry  has  died 
away,  I  have  caught  up  the  chorus  and  carried 
it  single-throated  through  the  wheeling  singing 
spheres. 

There  is  more  of  fact  than  of  fancy  to  this.  That 
a  fox  ever  purposely  ran  a  dog  to  death,  would 
be  hard  to  prove ;  but  that  the  dogs  run  them- 
selves to  death  in  a  single  extended  chase  after  a 
single  fox  is  a  common  occurrence  here  in  the 
woods  about  the  farm.  Occasionally  the  fox  may 
be  overtaken  by  the  hounds ;  seldom,  however, 
except  in  the  case  of  a  very  young  one  or  of  a 
stranger,  unacquainted  with  the  lay  of  the  land, 


THE   FACE   OF  THE   FIELDS     n 

driven  into  the  rough  country  here  by  an  unusual 
combination  of  circumstances. 

I  have  been  both  fox  and  hound ;  I  have  run 
the  race  too  often  not  to  know  that  both  enjoy  it 
at  times,  fox  as  much  as  hound.  Some  weeks  ago 
the  dogs  carried  a  young  fox  around  and  around 
the  farm,  hunting  him  here,  there,  everywhere,  as 
if  in  a  game  of  hide-and-seek.  An  old  fox  would 
have  led  them  on  a  long  coursing  run  across  the 
range.  It  was  early  fall  and  warm,  so  that  at  dusk 
the  dogs  were  caught  and  taken  off  the  trail.  The 
fox  soon  sauntered  up  through  the  mowing  field 
behind  the  barn,  came  out  upon  the  bare  knoll 
near  the  house,  and  sat  there  in  the  moonlight 
yapping  down  at  Rex  and  Dewy,  the  house  dogs 
in  the  two  farms  below.  Rex  is  a  Scotch  collie, 
Dewy  a  dreadful  mix  of  dog-dregs.  He  had  been 
tail-ender  in  the  pack  for  a  while  during  the  after- 
noon. Both  dogs  answered  back  at  the  young  fox. 
But  he  could  not  egg  them  on.  Rex  was  too  fat, 
Dewy  had  had  enough;  not  so  the  young  fox. 
It  had  been  fun.  He  wanted  more.  "  Come  on, 
Dewy ! "  he  cried.  "  Come  on,  Rex,  play  tag  again. 
You  're  still  '  it/  " 

I  was  at  work  with  my  chickens  one  day  when 


12     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

the  fox  broke  from  cover  in  the  tall  woods,  struck 
the  old  wagon  road  along  the  ridge,  and  came 
at  a  gallop  down  behind  the  hencoops,  with  five 
hounds  not  a  minute  behind.  They  passed  with 
a  crash  and  were  gone  —  up  over  the  ridge  and 
down  into  the  east  swamp.  Soon  I  noticed  that 
the  pack  had  broken,  deploying  in  every  direc- 
tion, beating  the  ground  over  and  over.  Reynard 
had  given  them  the  slip,  on  the  ridge-side,  evi- 
dently, for  there  were  no  cries  from  below  in  the 
swamp. 

The  noon  whistles  blew,  and  leaving  my  work 
I  went  down  to  re-stake  my  cow  in  the  meadow. 
I  had  just  drawn  her  chain-pin  when  down 
the  road  through  the  orchard  behind  me  came 
the  fox,  hopping  high  up  and  down,  his  neck 
stretched,  his  eye  peeled  for  poultry.  Spying  a 
white  hen  of  my  neighbor's,  he  made  for  her, 
clear  to  the  barnyard  wall.  Then,  hopping  higher 
for  a  better  view,  he  sighted  another  hen  in  the 
front  yard,  skipped  in  gayly  through  the  fence, 
seized  her,  loped  across  the  road,  and  away  up 
the  birch-grown  hills  beyond. 

The  dogs  had  been  at  his  very  heels  ten  min- 
utes before.  He  had  fooled  them.  He  had  done 


THE    FACE   OF  THE   FIELDS     13 

it  again  and  again.  They  were  even  now  yelping 
at  the  end  of  the  baffling  trail  behind  the  ridge. 
Let  them  yelp.  It  is  a  kind  and  convenient  habit 
of  dogs,  this  yelping,  one  can  tell  so  exactly 
where  they  are.  Meantime  one  can  take  a  turn 
for  one's  self  at  the  chase,  get  a  bite  of  chicken, 
a  drink  of  water,  a  wink  or  two  of  rest,  and  when 
the  yelping  gets  warm  again,  one  is  quite  ready 
to  pick  up  one's  heels  and  lead  the  pack  another 
merry  dance.  The  fox  is  almost  a  humorist. 

This  is  the  way  the  races  are  all  run  off.  Now 
and  then  they  may  end  tragically.  A  fox  cannot 
reckon  on  the  hunter  with  a  gun.  Only  dogs  en- 
tered into  the  account  when  the  balance  in  the 
scheme  of  things  was  struck  for  the  fox.  But,  mor- 
tal finish  or  no,  the  spirit  of  the  chase  is  neither 
rage  nor  terror,  but  the  excitement  of  a  matched 
game,  the  ecstasy  of  pursuit  for  the  hound,  the 
passion  of  escape  for  the  fox,  without  fury  or  fear 
—  except  for  the  instant  at  the  start  and  at  the 
finish  —  when  it  is  a  finish. 

This  is  the  spirit  of  the  chase  —  of  the  race, 
more  truly,  for  it  is  always  a  race,  where  the  stake 
is  not  life  and  death,  as  we  conceive  of  life  and 
death,  but  rather  the  joy  of  being.  The  hound 


i4     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

cares  as  little  for  his  own  life  as  for  the  life  he  is 
hunting.  It  is  the  race,  instead ;  it  is  the  moment 
of  crowded,  complete,  supreme  existence  for  him 
—  "glory"  we  call  it  when  men  run  it  off  to- 
gether. Death,  and  the  fear  of  death,  are  incon- 
ceivable to  the  animal  mind.  Only  enemies  exist 
in  the  world  out  of  doors,  only  hounds,  foxes, 
hawks  —  they,  and  their  scents,  their  sounds  and 
shadows ;  and  not  fear,  but  readiness  only.  The 
level  of  wild  life,  of  the  soul  of  all  nature,  is  a 
great  serenity.  It  is  seldom  lowered,  but  often 
raised  to  a  higher  level,  intenser,  faster,  more  ex- 
ultant. 

The  serrate  pines  on  my  horizon  are  not  the 
pickets  of  a  great  pen.  My  fields  and  swamps  and 
ponds  are  not  one  wide  battlefield,  as  if  the  only 
work  of  my  wild  neighbors  were  bloody  war,  and 
the  whole  of  their  existence  a  reign  of  terror.  This 
is  a  universe  of  law  and  order  and  marvelous  bal- 
ance ;  conditions  these  of  life,  of  normal,  peace- 
ful, joyous  life.  Life  and  not  death  is  the  law,  joy 
and  not  fear  is  the  spirit,  is  the  frame  of  all  that 
breathes,  of  very  matter  itself. 

And  ever  at  the  loom  of  Birth 

The  Mighty  Mother  weaves  and  sings; 


THE  FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS     15 

She  weaves — fresh  robes  for  mangled  earth; 
She  sings  —  fresh  hopes  for  desperate  things. 

"  For  the  rest,"  says  Hathi,  most  unscientific  of 
elephants,  in  the  most  impossible  of  Jungle  Sto- 
ries, "  for  the  rest,  Fear  walks  up  and  down  the 
Jungle  by  day  and  by  night.  .  .  .  And  only  when 
there  is  one  great  Fear  over  all,  as  there  is  now, 
can  we  of  the  Jungle  lay  aside  our  little  fears  and 
meet  together  in  one  place  as  we  do  now." 

Now,  the  law  of  the  Indian  Jungle  is  as  old 
and  as  true  as  the  sky,  and  just  as  widespread  and 
as  all-encompassing.  It  is  the  identical  law  of  my 
New  England  pastures.  It  obtains  here  as  it  holds 
far  away  yonder.  The  trouble  is  all  with  Hathi. 
Hathi  has  lived  so  long  in  a  British  camp,  has 
seen  so  few  men  but  British  soldiers,  and  has  felt 
so  little  law  but  British  military  law  in  India,  that 
very  naturally  Hathi  gets  the  military  law  and  the 
Jungle  law  mixed  up. 

Now  these  are  the  Laws  of  the  Jungle,  and  many  and  mighty 

are  they; 
But  the  head  and  the  hoof  of  the  Law,  and  the  haunch  and  the 

hump  is  —  Obey ! 

else  one  of  the  little  fears,  or  the  BIG  FEAR, 
will  get  you ! 


16     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

But  this  is  the  Law  of  the  Camp,  and  as  beau- 
tifully untrue  of  the  Jungle,  and  of  my  woods 
and  pastures,  as  Hathi's  account  of  how,  before 
Fear  came,  the  First  of  the  Tigers  ate  grass.  Still, 
Nebuchadnezzar  ate  grass,  and  he  also  grew  eagles' 
feathers  upon  his  body.  Perhaps  the  First  of  the 
Tigers  had  feathers  instead  of  fur,  though  Hathi 
is  silent  as  to  that,  saying  only  that  the  First  of 
the  Tigers  had  no  stripes.  It  might  not  harm  us 
to  remember,  however,  that  nowadays  —  as  was 
true  in  the  days  of  the  Sabretooth  tiger  (he  is  a 
fossil)  —  tigers  eat  grass  only  when  they  feel  very 
bad,  or  when  they  find  a  bunch  of  catnip.  The 
wild  animals  that  Hathi  knew  are  more  marvel- 
ous than  the  Wild  Animals  I  Have  Known,  but 
Hathi's  knowledge  of  Jungle  law  is  all  stuff  and 
nonsense. 

There  is  no  ogre,  Fear,  no  command,  Obey,  but 
the  widest  kind  of  a  personal  permit  to  live  — 
joyously,  abundantly,  intensely,  frugally  at  times, 
painfully  at  times,  and  always  with  large  liberty; 
until,  suddenly,  the  time  comes  to  Let  Live,  when 
death  is  almost  sure  to  be  instant,  with  little  pain, 
and  less  fear. 

But  am  I  not  generalizing  from  the  single  case 


THE   FACE   OF  THE   FIELDS     17 

of  the  fox  and  hounds'?  or  at  most  from  two 
cases — the  hen  and  the  hawk?  And  are  not  these 
cases  far  from  typical  ?  Fox  and  hound  are  un- 
usually matched,  both  of  them  are  canines,  and 
so  closely  related  that  the  dog  has  been  known 
to  let  a  she-fox  go  unharmed  at  the  end  of  an  ex- 
citing hunt.  Suppose  the  fox  were  a  defenseless 
rabbit,  what  of  fear  and  terror  then  ? 

Ask  any  one  who  has  shot  in  the  rabbity  fields 
of  southern  New  Jersey.  The  rabbit  seldom  runs 
in  blind  terror.  He  is  soft-eyed,  and  timid,  and 
as  gentle  as  a  pigeon,  but  he  is  not  defenseless. 
A  nobler  set  of  legs  was  never  bestowed  by  nature 
than  the  little  cotton-tail's.  They  are  as  wings 
compared  with  the  deformities  that  bear  up  the 
ordinary  rabbit  hound.  With  winged  legs,  pro- 
tecting color,  a  clear  map  of  the  country  in  his 
head,  —  its  stumps,  rail-piles,  cat-brier  tangles,  and 
narrow  rabbit-roads,  —  with  all  this  as  a  handicap, 
Bunny  may  well  run  his  usual  cool  and  winning 
race.  The  balance  is  just  as  even,  the  chances 
quite  as  good,  and  the  contest  as  interesting,  to 
him  as  to  Reynard. 

I  have  seen  a  rabbit  squat  close  in  his  form 
and  let  a  hound  pass  yelping  within  a  few  feet  of 


18     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

him,  but  as  ready  as  a  hair-trigger  should  he  be 
discovered.  I  have  seen  him  leap  for  his  life  as 
the  dog  sighted  him,  and  bounding  like  a  ball 
across  the  stubble,  disappear  in  the  woods,  the 
hound  within  two  jumps  of  his  flashing  tail.  I 
have  waited  at  the  end  of  the  wood-road  for  the 
runners  to  come  back,  down  the  home-stretch,  for 
the  finish.  On  they  go  for  a  quarter,  or  perhaps 
half  a  mile,  through  the  woods,  the  baying  of  the 
hound  faint  and  intermittent  in  the  distance,  then 
quite  lost.  No,  there  it  is  again,  louder  now.  They 
have  turned  the  course.  I  wait. 

The  quiet  life  of  the  woods  is  undisturbed,  for 
the  voice  of  the  hound  is  only  an  echo,  not  un- 
like the  far-off  tolling  of  a  slow-swinging  bell. 
The  leaves  stir  as  a  wood-mouse  scurries  from  his 
stump;  an  acorn  rattles  down;  then  in  the  wind- 
ing wood-road  I  hear  the  pit-pat,  pit-pat,  of  soft 
furry  feet,  and  there  at  the  bend  is  the  rabbit.  He 
stops,  rises  high  up  on  his  haunches,  and  listens. 
He  drops  again  upon  all  fours,  scratches  himself 
behind  the  ear,  reaches  over  the  cart-rut  for  a  nip 
of  sassafras,  hops  a  little  nearer,  and  throws  his 
big  ears  forward  in  quick  alarm,  for  he  sees  me, 
and,  as  if  something  had  exploded  under  him,  he 


THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS     19 

kicks  into  the  air  and  is  off,  —  leaving  a  pretty 
tangle  for  the  dog  to  unravel  later  on,  by  this 
mighty  jump  to  the  side. 

My  children  and  the  man  were  witnesses  re- 
cently of  an  exciting,  and,  for  this  section  of 
Massachusetts,  a  novel  race,  which,  but  for  them, 
must  certainly  have  ended  fatally.  The  boys  had 
picked  up  the  morning  fall  of  chestnuts,  and  were 
coming  through  the  wood-lot  where  the  man  was 
chopping,  when  down  the  hillside  toward  them 
rushed  a  little  chipmunk,  his  teeth  a-chatter  with 
terror,  for  close  behind  him,  with  the  easy  wavy 
motion  of  a  shadow,  glided  a  dark  brown  animal, 
which  the  man  took  on  the  instant  for  a  mink, 
but  which  must  have  been  a  large  weasel  or  a  pine 
marten.  When  almost  at  the  feet  of  the  boys, 
and  about  to  be  seized  by  the  marten,  the  squeak- 
ing chipmunk  ran  up  a  tree.  Up  glided  the  mar- 
ten, up  for  twenty  feet.  Then  the  chipmunk 
jumped.  It  was  a  fearfully  close  call.  The  marten 
did  not  dare  to  jump,  but  turned  and  started  down, 
when  the  man  intercepted  him  with  a  stick. 
Around  and  around  the  tree  he  dodged,  growling 
and  snarling  and  avoiding  the  stick,  not  a  bit 
abashed,  stubbornly  holding  his  own,  until  forced 


ao     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

to  seek  refuge  among  the  branches.  Meanwhile 
the  terrified  chipmunk  had  recovered  his  nerve 
and  sat  quietly  watching  the  sudden  turn  of  affairs 
from  a  near-by  stump. 

I  climbed  into  the  cupola  of  the  barn  this  morn- 
ing, as  I  frequently  do  throughout  the  winter,  and 
brought  down  a  dazed  junco  that  was  beating  his 
life  out  up  there  against  the  window-panes.  He 
lay  on  his  back  in  my  open  hand,  either  feign- 
ing death  or  really  powerless  with  fear.  His  eyes 
were  closed,  his  whole  tiny  body  throbbing  con- 
vulsively with  his  throbbing  heart.  Taking  him 
to  the  door,  I  turned  him  over  and  gave  him  a 
gentle  toss.  Instantly  his  wings  flashed,  they  zig- 
zagged him  for  a  yard  or  two,  then  bore  him 
swiftly  around  the  corner  of  the  house  and 
dropped  him  in  the  midst  of  his  fellows,  where 
they  were  feeding  upon  the  lawn.  He  shaped 
himself  up  a  little  and  fell  to  picking  with  the 
others. 

From  a  state  of  collapse  the  laws  of  his  being 
had  brought  the  bird  into  normal  behavior  as 
quickly  and  completely  as  the  collapsed  rubber 
ball  is  rounded  by  the  laws  of  its  being.  The 
memory  of  the  fright  seems  to  have  been  an  im- 


THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS     21 

pression  exactly  like  the  dent  in  the  rubber  ball 
—  as  if  it  had  never  been. 

Yet  the  analogy  only  half  holds.  Memories  of 
the  most  tenacious  kind  the  animals  surely  have ; 
but  little  or  no  voluntary,  unaided  power  to  use 
them.  Memory  is  largely  a  mechanical,  a  crank 
process  with  the  animals,  a  kind  of  magic-lantern 
show,  where  the  concrete  slide  is  necessary  for  the 
picture  on  the  screen ;  else  the  past  as  the  future 
hangs  a  blank.  The  dog  will  sometimes  seem  to 
cherish  a  grudge ;  so  will  the  elephant.  Some  one 
injures  or  wrongs  him,  and  the  huge  beast  harbors 
the  memory,  broods  it,  and  waits  his  opportunity 
for  revenge.  Yet  the  records  of  these  cases 
usually  show  the  creature  to  be  living  with  the 
object  of  his  hatred  —  keeper  or  animal  —  and 
that  his  memory  goes  no  further  back  than  the 
present  moment,  than  the  sight  of  the  enemy; 
memory  always  taking  an  immediate,  concrete 
shape. 

At  my  railroad  station  I  frequently  see  a  yoke 
of  great  sleepy,  bald-faced  oxen,  that  look  as  much 
alike  as  two  blackbirds.  Their  driver  knows  them 
apart ;  but  as  they  stand  there  bound  to  one  an- 
other by  the  heavy  bar  across  their  foreheads,  it 


22     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

would  puzzle  anybody  else  to  tell  Buck  from 
Berry.  But  not  if  he  approach  them  wearing  an 
overcoat.  At  sight  of  me  in  an  overcoat  the  off 
ox  will  snort  and  back  and  thresh  about  in  terror, 
twisting  the  head  of  his  yoke-fellow,  nearly  break- 
ing his  neck,  and  trampling  him  miserably.  But 
the  nigh  ox  is  used  to  it.  He  chews  and  blinks 
away  placidly,  keeps  his  feet  the  best  he  can,  and 
does  n't  try  to  understand  at  all  why  great-coats 
should  so  frighten  his  cud-chewing  brother.  I  will 
drop  off  my  coat  and  go  up  immediately  to  smooth 
the  muzzles  of  both  oxen,  blinking  sleepily  while 
the  lumber  is  being  loaded  on. 

Years  ago,  the  driver  told  me,  the  off  ox 
was  badly  frightened  by  a  big  woolly  coat,  the 
sight  or  smell  of  which  suggested  to  the  creature 
some  natural  enemy,  a  panther,  perhaps,  or  a 
bear.  The  memory  remained,  but  beyond  recall 
except  in  the  presence  of  its  first  cause,  the  great- 
coat. 

To  us,  and  momentarily  to  the  lower  animals, 
no  doubt,  there  is  a  monstrous,  a  desperate  aspect 
to  nature  —  night  and  drouth  and  cold,  the  light- 
ning, the  hurricane,  the  earthquake :  phases  of 
nature  that  to  the  scientific  mind  are  often  appall- 


THE   FACE   OF  THE   FIELDS     23 

ing,  and  to  the  unthinking  and  superstitious  are 
usually  sinister,  cruel,  personal,  leading  to  much 
dark  talk  of  banshees  and  of  the  mysteries  of  Prov- 
idence—  as  if  there  were  still  necessity  to  justify 
the  ways  of  God  to  man !  We  are  clutched  by  these 
terrors  even  as  the  j unco  was  clutched  in  my  gob- 
lin hand.  When  the  mighty  fingers  open,  we  zig- 
zag, dazed  from  the  danger;  but  fall  to  planning, 
before  the  tremors  of  the  earth  have  ceased,  how 
we  can  build  a  greater  and  finer  city  on  the  ruins 
of  the  old.  Upon  the  crumbled  heap  of  the  sec- 
ond Messina  the  third  will  rise,  and  upon  that  the 
fourth,  unless  the  quaking  site  is  forever  swal- 
lowed by  the  sea.  Terror  can  kill  the  living,  but 
it  cannot  hinder  them  from  forgetting,  or  prevent 
them  from  hoping,  or,  for  more  than  an  instant, 
stop  them  from  doing.  Such  is  the  law  of  being 
—  the  law  of  the  Jungle,  of  Heaven,  of  my  pas- 
tures, of  myself,  and  of  the  little  j  unco.  The  light 
of  the  sun  may  burn  out,  motion  may  cease,  mat- 
ter vanish  away,  and  life  come  to  an  end ;  but  so 
long  as  life  continues  it  must  continue  to  assert 
itself,  to  obey  the  law  of  being — to  multiply  and 
replenish  the  earth,  and  rejoice. 

Life,  like  Law  and  Matter,  is  all  of  one  piece. 


24     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

The  horse  in  my  stable,  the  robin,  the  toad,  the 
beetle,  the  vine  in  my  garden,  the  garden  itself, 
and  I  together  with  them  all,  come  out  of  the 
same  divine  dust;  we  all  breathe  the  same  divine 
breath ;  we  have  our  beings  under  the  same  di- 
vine law;  only  they  do  not  know  that  the  law, 
the  breath,  and  the  dust  are  divine.  If  I  do  know, 
and  yet  can  so  readily  forget  such  knowledge,  can 
so  hardly  cease  from  being,  can  so  eternally  find 
the  purpose,  the  hope,  the  joy  of  life  within  me, 
how  soon  for  them,  my  lowly  fellow  mortals,  must 
vanish  all  sight  of  fear,  all  memory  of  pain  !  And 
how  abiding  with  them,  how  compelling,  the  ne- 
cessity to  live !  And  in  their  unquestioning  obe- 
dience what  joy ! 

The  face  of  the  fields  is  as  changeful  as  the 
face  of  a  child.  Every  passing  wind,  every  shift- 
ing cloud,  every  calling  bird,  every  baying  hound, 
every  shape,  shadow,  fragrance,  sound,  and  tre- 
mor, are  so  many  emotions  reflected  there.  But 
if  time  and  experience  and  pain  come,  they  pass 
utterly  away ;  for  the  face  of  the  fields  does  not 
grow  old  or  wise  or  seamed  with  pain.  It  is  always 
the  face  of  a  child,  —  asleep  in  winter,  awake  in 
summer,  —  a  face  of  life  and  health  always,  if  we 


THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS     25 

will  but  see  what  pushes  the  falling  leaves  off, 
what  lies  in  slumber  under  the  covers  of  the  snow ; 
if  we  will  but  feel  the  strength  of  the  north  wind, 
and  the  wild  fierce  joy  of  the  fox  and  hound  as 
they  course  the  turning,  tangling  paths  of  the 
woodlands  in  their  race  with  one  another  against 
the  record  set  by  Life. 


II 

TURTLE  EGGS  FOR  AGASSIZ 


TURTLE   EGGS   FOR   AGASSIZ 

t  is  one  of  the  wonders  of  the  world 
that  so  few  books  are  written.  With 
every  human  being  a  possible  book, 
and  with  many  a  human  being 
capable  of  becoming  more  books 
than  the  world  could  contain,  is  it  not  amazing  that 
the  books  of  men  are  so  few  ?  And  so  stupid ! 

I  took  down,  recently,  from  the  shelves  of  a 
great  public  library,  the  four  volumes  of  Agassiz's 
"Contributions  to  the  Natural  History  of  the  Uni- 
ted States."  I  doubt  if  anybody  but  the  charwoman, 
with  her  duster,  had  touched  those  volumes  for 
twenty-five  years.  They  are  an  excessively  learned, 
a  monumental,  an  epoch-making  work,  the  fruit 
of  vast  and  heroic  labors,  with  colored  plates  on 
stone,  showing  the  turtles  of  the  United  States, 
and  their  embryology.  The  work  was  published 
more  than  half  a  century  ago  (by  subscription) ; 
but  it  looked  old  beyond  its  years  —  massive, 
heavy,  weathered,  as  if  dug  from  the  rocks.  It  was 
difficult  to  feel  that  Agassiz  could  have  written  it 


30     THE   FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

—  could  have  built  it,  grown  it,  for  the  laminated 
pile  had  required  for  its  growth  the  patience  and 
painstaking  care  of  a  process  of  nature,  as  if  it 
were  a  kind  of  printed  coral  reef.  Agassiz  do  this  ? 
The  big,  human,  magnetic  man  at  work  upon 
these  pages  of  capital  letters,  Roman  figures, 
brackets,  and  parentheses  in  explanation  of  the 
pages  of  diagrams  and  plates !  I  turned  away  with 
a  sigh  from  the  weary  learning,  to  read  the  pre- 
face. 

When  a  great  man  writes  a  great  book  he  usu- 
ally flings  a  preface  after  it,  and  thereby  saves  it, 
sometimes,  from  oblivion.  Whether  so  or  not,  the 
best  things  in  most  books  are  their  prefaces.  It 
was  not,  however,  the  quality  of  the  preface  to 
these  great  volumes  that  interested  me,  but  rather 
the  wicked  waste  of  durable  book-material  that 
went  to  its  making.  Reading  down  through  the 
catalogue  of  human  names  and  of  thanks  for  help 
received,  I  came  to  a  sentence  beginning :  — 

"In  New  England  I  have  myself  collected 
largely;  but  I  have  also  received  valuable  con- 
tributions from  the  late  Rev.  Zadoc  Thompson 
of  Burlington;  .  .  .  from  Mr.  D.  Henry  Thoreau 
of  Concord ;  .  .  .  and  from  Mr.  J.  W.  P.  Jenks 


TURTLE   EGGS   FOR  AGASSIZ    31 

of  Middleboro'."  And  then  it  hastens  on  with  the 
thanks  in  order  to  get  to  the  turtles,  as  if  turtles 
were  the  one  and  only  thing  of  real  importance 
in  all  the  world. 

Turtles  no  doubt  are  important,  extremely  im- 
portant, embryologically,  as  part  of  our  genea- 
logical tree ;  but  they  are  away  down  among  the 
roots  of  the  tree  as  compared  with  the  late  Rev. 
Zadoc  Thompson  of  Burlington.  I  happen  to 
know  nothing  about  the  Rev.  Zadoc,  but  to  me 
he  looks  very  interesting.  Indeed,  any  reverend 
gentleman  of  his  name  and  day  who  would  catch 
turtles  for  Agassiz  must  have  been  interesting. 
And  as  for  D.  Henry  Thoreau,  we  know  he  was 
interesting.  The  rarest  wood-turtle  in  the  United 
States  was  not  so  rare  a  specimen  as  this  gentle- 
man of  Walden  Woods  and  Concord.  We  are 
glad  even  for  this  line  in  the  preface  about  him ; 
glad  to  know  that  he  tried,  in  this  untranscen- 
dental  way,  to  serve  his  day  and  generation.  If 
Agassiz  had  only  put  a  chapter  in  his  turtle  book 
about  it !  But  this  is  the  material  he  wasted,  this 
and  more  of  the  same  human  sort ;  for  the  "  Mr. 
J.  W.  P.  Jenks  of  Middleboro' "  (at  the  end  of 
the  quotation)  was,  some  years  later,  an  old  col- 


32     THE  FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

lege  professor  of  mine,  who  told  me  a  few  of  the 
particulars  of  his  turtle  contributions,  particulars 
which  Agassiz  should  have  found  a  place  for  in 
his  big  book.  The  preface,  in  another  paragraph, 
says  merely  that  this  gentleman  sent  turtles  to 
Cambridge  by  the  thousands  —  brief  and  scanty 
recognition !  For  that  is  not  the  only  thing  this 
gentleman  did.  On  one  occasion  he  sent,  not 
turtles,  but  turtle  eggs  to  Cambridge  —  brought 
them,  I  should  say ;  and  all  there  is  to  show  for 
it,  so  far  as  I  could  discover,  is  a  sectional  draw- 
ing of  a  bit  of  the  mesoblastic  layer  of  one  of  the 
eggs! 

Of  course,  Agassiz  wanted  to  make  that  meso- 
blastic drawing,  or  some  other  equally  important 
drawing,  and  had  to  have  the  fresh  turtle  egg  to 
draw  it  from.  He  had  to  have  it,  and  he  got  it. 
A  great  man,  when  he  wants  a  certain  turtle  egg, 
at  a  certain  time,  always  gets  it,  for  he  gets  some 
one  else  to  get  it.  I  am  glad  he  got  it.  But  what 
makes  me  sad  and  impatient  is  that  he  did  not 
think  it  worth  while  to  tell  about  the  getting  of 
it,  and  so  made  merely  a  learned  turtle  book  of 
what  might  have  been  an  exceedingly  interesting 
human  book. 


TURTLE   EGGS   FOR   AGASS1Z    33 

It  would  seem,  naturally,  that  there  could  be 
nothing  unusual  or  interesting  about  the  getting 
of  turtle  eggs  when  you  want  them.  Nothing  at 
all,  if  you  should  chance  to  want  the  eggs  as  you 
chance  to  find  them.  So  with  anything  else,  — 
good  copper  stock,  for  instance,  if  you  should 
chance  to  want  it,  and  should  chance  to  be  along 
when  they  chance  to  be  giving  it  away.  But  If 
you  want  copper  stock,  say  of  C  &  H  quality, 
when  you  want  it,  and  are  bound  to  have  it,  then 
you  must  command  more  than  a  college  profes- 
sor's salary.  And  likewise,  precisely,  when  it  is 
turtle  eggs  that  you  are  bound  to  have. 

Agassiz  wanted  those  turtle  eggs  when  he 
wanted  them  —  not  a  minute  over  three  hours 
from  the  minute  they  were  laid.  Yet  even  that 
does  not  seem  exacting,  hardly  more  difficult 
than  the  getting  of  hen  eggs  only  three  hours  old. 
Just  so,  provided  the  professor  could  have  had 
his  private  turtle-coop  in  Harvard  Yard ;  and  pro- 
vided he  could  have  made  his  turtles  lay.  But 
turtles  will  not  respond,  like  hens,  to  meat-scraps 
and  the  warm  mash.  The  professor's  problem  was 
not  to  get  from  a  mud  turtle's  nest  in  the  back 
yard  to  the  table  in  the  laboratory ;  but  to  get 


34    THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

from  the  laboratory  in  Cambridge  to  some  pond 
when  the  turtles  were  laying,  and  back  to  the 
laboratory  within  the  limited  time.  And  this,  in 
the  days  of  Darius  Green,  might  have  called  for 
nice  and  discriminating  work  —  as  it  did. 

Agassiz  had  been  engaged  for  a  long  time  upon 
his  "  Contributions."  He  had  brought  the  great 
work  nearly  to  a  finish.  It  was,  indeed,  finished 
but  for  one  small  yet  very  important  bit  of  ob- 
servation :  he  had  carried  the  turtle  egg  through 
every  stage  of  its  development  with  the  single 
exception  of  one  —  the  very  earliest  —  that  stage 
of  first  cleavages,  when  the  cell  begins  to  seg- 
ment, immediately  upon  its  being  laid.  That  be- 
ginning stage  had  brought  the  "  Contributions " 
to  a  halt.  To  get  eggs  that  were  fresh  enough 
to  show  the  incubation  at  this  period  had  been 
impossible. 

There  were  several  ways  that  Agassiz  might 
have  proceeded :  he  might  have  got  a  leave  of 
absence  for  the  spring  term,  taken  his  laboratory 
to  some  pond  inhabited  by  turtles,  and  there 
camped  until  he  should  catch  the  reptile  digging 
out  her  nest.  But  there  were  difficulties  in  all  of 
that  —  as  those  who  are  college  professors  and 


TURTLE   EGGS   FOR  AGASSIZ    35 

naturalists  know.  As  this  was  quite  out  of  the 
question,  he  did  the  easiest  thing  —  asked  Mr. 
Jenks  of  Middleboro'  to  get  him  the  eggs.  Mr. 
Jenks  got  them.  Agassiz  knew  all  about  his  get- 
ting of  them ;  and  I  say  the  strange  and  irritating 
thing  is,  that  Agassiz  did  not  think  it  worth  while 
to  tell  us  about  it,  at  least  in  the  preface  to  his 
monumental  work. 

It  was  many  years  later  that  Mr.  Jenks,  then 
a  gray-haired  college  professor,  told  me  how  he 
got  those  eggs  to  Agassiz. 

"  I  was  principal  of  an  academy,  during  my 
younger  years,"  he  began,  "and  was  busy  one 
day  with  my  classes,  when  a  large  man  suddenly 
filled  the  doorway  of  the  room,  smiled  to  the  four 
corners  of  the  room,  and  called  out  with  a  big, 
quick  voice  that  he  was  Professor  Agassiz. 

"  Of  course  he  was.  I  knew  it,  even  before  he 
had  had  time  to  shout  it  to  me  across  the  room. 

"Would  I  get  him  some  turtle  eggs?  he 
called.  Yes,  I  would.  And  would  I  get  them  to 
Cambridge  within  three  hours  from  the  time  they 
were  laid  *?  Yes,  I  would.  And  I  did.  And  it  was 
worth  the  doing.   But  I  did  it  only  once. 

"  When  I  promised  Agassiz  those  eggs  I  knew 


36     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

where  I  was  going  to'get  them.  I  had  got  turtle 
eggs  there  before  —  at  a  particular  patch  of  sandy 
shore  along  a  pond,  a  few  miles  distant  from  the 
academy. 

"  Three  hours  was  the  limit.  From  my  railroad 
station  to  Boston  was  thirty-five  miles;  from  the 
pond  to  the  station  was  perhaps  three  or  four 
miles ;  from  Boston  to  Cambridge  we  called  about 
three  miles.  Forty  miles  in  round  numbers !  We 
figured  it  all  out  before  he  returned,  and  got  the 
trip  down  to  two  hours,  —  record  time:  driving 
from  the  pond  to  the  station ;  from  the  station  by 
express  train  to  Boston;  from  Boston  by  cab  to 
Cambridge.  This  left  an  easy  hour  for  accidents 
and  delays. 

"  Cab  and  car  and  carriage  we  reckoned  into 
our  time-table ;  but  what  we  did  n't  figure  on  was 
the  turtle."  And  he  paused  abruptly. 

"  Young  man,"  he  went  on,  his  shaggy  brows 
and  spectacles  hardly  hiding  the  twinkle  in  the 
eyes  that  were  bent  severely  upon  me,  "  young 
man,  when  you  go  after  turtle  eggs,  take  into 
account  the  turtle.  No !  no  !  that 's  bad  advice. 
Youth  never  reckons  on  the  turtle  —  and  youth 
seldom  ought  to.  Only  old  age  does  that ;  and  old 


TURTLE  EGGS  FOR  AGASSIZ    37 

age  would  never  have  got   those  turtle  eggs  to 
Agassiz. 

"  It  was  in  the  early  spring  that  Agassiz  came 
to  the  academy,  long  before  there  was  any  like- 
lihood of  the  turtles  laying.  But  I  was  eager  for 
the  quest,  and  so  fearful  of  failure,  that  I  started 
out  to  watch  at  the  pond  fully  two  weeks  ahead 
of  the  time  that  the  turtles  might  be  expected  to 
lay.  I  remember  the  date  clearly :  it  was  May  14. 

"  A  little  before  dawn  —  along  near  three  o'clock 
—  I  would  drive  over  to  the  pond,  hitch  my  horse 
near  by,  settle  myself  quietly  among  some  thick 
cedars  close  to  the  sandy  shore,  and  there  I  would 
wait,  my  kettle  of  sand  ready,  my  eye  covering 
the  whole  sleeping  pond.  Here  among  the  cedars 
I  would  eat  my  breakfast,  and  then  get  back  in 
good  season  to  open  the  academy  for  the  morn- 
ing session. 

"And  so  the  watch  began. 

"  I  soon  came  to  know  individually  the  dozen 
or  more  turtles  that  kept  to  my  side  of  the  pond. 
Shortly  after  the  cold  mist  would  lift  and  melt 
away,  they  would  stick  up  their  heads  through  the 
quiet  water;  and  as  the  sun  slanted  down  over 
the  ragged  rim  of  treetops,  the  slow  things  would 


38     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

float  into  the  warm,  lighted  spots,  or  crawl  out 
and  doze  comfortably  on  the  hummocks  and 
snags. 

"  What  fragrant  mornings  those  were !  How 
fresh  and  new  and  unbreathed  !  The  pond  odors, 
the  woods  odors,  the  odors  of  the  ploughed  fields 
—  of  water-lily,  and  wild  grape,  and  the  dew-laid 
soil !  I  can  taste  them  yet,  and  hear  them  yet  — 
the  still,  large  sounds  of  the  waking  day  —  the 
pickerel  breaking  the  quiet  with  his  swirl ;  the 
kingfisher  dropping  anchor;  the  stir  of  feet  and 
wings  among  the  trees.  And  then  the  thought 
of  the  great  book  being  held  up  for  me !  Those 
were  rare  mornings ! 

"  But  there  began  to  be  a  good  many  of  them, 
for  the  turtles  showed  no  desire  to  lay.  They 
sprawled  in  the  sun,  and  never  one  came  out 
upon  the  sand  as  if  she  intended  to  help  on  the 
great  professor's  book.  The  embryology  of  her 
eggs  was  of  small  concern  to  her;  her  Contribu- 
tion to  the  Natural  History  of  the  United  States 
could  wait. 

"And  it  did  wait.  I  began  my  watch  on  the 
14th  of  May;  June  1st  found  me  still  among 
the  cedars,  still  waiting,  as  I  had  waited  every 


TURTLE   EGGS   FOR   AGASSIZ    39 

morning,  Sundays  and  rainy  days  alike.  June  1st 
was  a  perfect  morning,  but  every  turtle  slid  out 
upon  her  log,  as  if  egg-laying  might  be  a  matter 
strictly  of  next  year. 

"  I  began  to  grow  uneasy,  —  not  impatient  yet, 
for  a  naturalist  learns  his  lesson  of  patience  early, 
and  for  all  his  years ;  but  I  began  to  fear  lest,  by 
some  subtle  sense,  my  presence  might  some- 
how be  known  to  the  creatures;  that  they  might 
have  gone  to  some  other  place  to  lay,  while  I  was 
away  at  the  schoolroom. 

"  I  watched  on  to  the  end  of  the  first  week,  on 
to  the  end  of  the  second  week  in  June,  seeing  the 
mists  rise  and  vanish  every  morning,  and  along 
with  them  vanish,  more  and  more,  the  poetry  of 
my  early  morning  vigil.  Poetry  and  rheumatism 
cannot  long  dwell  together  in  the  same  clump  of 
cedars,  and  I  had  begun  to  feel  the  rheumatism. 
A  month  of  morning  mists  wrapping  me  around 
had  at  last  soaked  through  to  my  bones.  But 
Agassiz  was  waiting,  and  the  world  was  waiting, 
for  those  turtle  eggs ;  and  I  would  wait.  It  was  all 
I  could  do,  for  there  is  no  use  bringing  a  china 
nest-egg  to  a  turtle ;  she  is  not  open  to  any  such 
delicate  suggestion. 


4o     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

"  Then  came  the  mid-June  Sunday  morning, 
with  dawn  breaking  a  little  after  three :  a  warm, 
wide-awake  dawn,  with  the  level  mist  lifted  from 
the  level  surface  of  the  pond  a  full  hour  higher 
than  I  had  seen  it  any  morning  before. 

"This  was  the  day.  I  knew  it.  I  have  heard 
persons  say  that  they  can  hear  the  grass  grow ; 
that  they  know  by  some  extra  sense  when  danger 
is  nigh.  That  we  have  these  extra  senses  I  fully 
believe,  and  I  believe  they  can  be  sharpened  by 
cultivation.  For  a  month  I  had  been  brooding 
over  this  pond,  and  now  I  knew.  I  felt  a  stirring 
of  the  pulse  of  things  that  the  cold-hearted 
turtles  could  no  more  escape  than  could  the 
clods  and  I. 

"Leaving  my  horse  unhitched,  as  if  he,  too, 
understood,  I  slipped  eagerly  into  my  covert  for 
a  look  at  the  pond.  As  I  did  so,  a  large  pickerel 
ploughed  a  furrow  out  through  the  spatter-docks, 
and  in  his  wake  rose  the  head  of  an  enormous 
turtle.  Swinging  slowly  around,  the  creature 
headed  straight  for  the  shore,  and  without  a  pause 
scrambled  out  on  the  sand. 

"  She  was  about  the  size  of  a  big  scoop-shovel ; 
but  that  was  not  what  excited  me,  so  much  as  her 


TURTLE  EGGS  FOR  AGASSIZ    41 

manner,  and  the  gait  at  which  she  moved ;  for 
there  was  method  in  it  and  fixed  purpose.  On  she 
came,  shuffling  over  the  sand  toward  the  higher 
open  fields,  with  a  hurried,  determined  see-saw 
that  was  taking  her  somewhere  in  particular,  and 
that  was  bound  to  get  her  there  on  time. 

44 1  held  my  breath.  Had  she  been  a  dinosau- 
rian  making  Mesozoic  footprints,  I  could  not 
have  been  more  fearful.  For  footprints  in  the 
Mesozoic  mud,  or  in  the  sands  of  time,  were  as 
nothing  to  me  when  compared  with  fresh  turtle 
eggs  in  the  sands  of  this  pond. 

44  But  over  the  strip  of  sand,  without  a  stop,  she 
paddled,  and  up  a  narrow  cow-path  into  the  high 
grass  along  a  fence.  Then  up  the  narrow  cow- 
path,  on  all  fours,  just  like  another  turtle,  I  pad- 
dled, and  into  the  high  wet  grass  along  the  fence. 

44 1  kept  well  within  sound  of  her,  for  she  moved 
recklessly,  leaving  a  trail  of  flattened  grass  a  foot 
and  a  half  wide.  I  wanted  to  stand  up,  —  and  I 
don't  believe  I  could  have  turned  her  back  with 
a  rail,  —  but  I  was  afraid  if  she  saw  me  that  she 
might  return  indefinitely  to  the  pond ;  so  on  I 
went,  flat  to  the  ground,  squeezing  through  the 
lower  rails  of  the  fence,  as  if  the  field  beyond  were 


42     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

a  melon-patch.  It  was  nothing  of  the  kind,  only 
a  wild,  uncomfortable  pasture,  full  of  dewberry 
vines,  and  very  discouraging.  They  were  exces- 
sively wet  vines  and  briery.  I  pulled  my  coat- 
sleeves  as  far  over  my  fists  as  I  could  get  them, 
and  with  the  tin  pail  of  sand  swinging  from  be- 
tween my  teeth  to  avoid  noise,  I  stumped  fiercely 
but  silently  on  after  the  turtle. 

"  She  was  laying  her  course,  I  thought,  straight 
down  the  length  of  this  dreadful  pasture,  when, 
not  far  from  the  fence,  she  suddenly  hove  to, 
warped  herself  short  about,  and  came  back,  barely 
clearing  me,  at  a  clip  that  was  thrilling.  I  warped 
about,  too,  and  in  her  wake  bore  down  across  the 
corner  of  the  pasture,  across  the  powdery  public 
road,  and  on  to  a  fence  along  a  field  of  young 
corn. 

"  I  was  somewhat  wet  by  this  time,  but  not  so 
wet  as  I  had  been  before  wallowing  through  the 
deep  dry  dust  of  the  road.  Hurrying  up  behind 
a  large  tree  by  the  fence,  I  peered  down  the  corn- 
rows  and  saw  the  turtle  stop,  and  begin  to  paw 
about  in  the  loose  soft  soil.  She  was  going  to  lay ! 

"  I  held  on  to  the  tree  and  watched,  as  she  tried 
this  place,  and  that  place,  and  the  other  place  — 


TURTLE   EGGS  FOR  AGASSIZ    43 

the  eternally  feminine  !  —  But  the  place,  evidently, 
was  hard  to  find.  What  could  a  female  turtle  do 
with  a  whole  field  of  possible  nests  to  choose  from  ? 
Then  at  last  she  found  it,  and  whirling  about,  she 
backed  quickly  at  it,  and,  tail  first,  began  to  bury 
herself  before  my  staring  eyes. 

"Those  were  not  the  supreme  moments  of  my 
life;  perhaps  those  moments  came  later  that  day; 
but  those  certainly  were  among  the  slowest,  most 
dreadfully  mixed  of  moments  that  I  ever  expe- 
rienced. They  were  hours  long.  There  she  was, 
her  shell  just  showing,  like  some  old  hulk  in  the 
sand  along  shore.  And  how  long  would  she  stay 
there?  and  how  should  I  know  if  she  had  laid  an 

egg? 

"I   could  still  wait.    And  so  I  waited,  when, 

over  the  freshly  awakened  fields,  floated  four  mel- 
low strokes  from  the  distant  town  clock. 

"Four  o'clock  !  Why,  there  was  no  train  until 
seven  !  No  train  for  three  hours !  The  eggs  would 
spoil !  Then  with  a  rush  it  came  over  me  that  this 
was  Sunday  morning,  and  there  was  no  regular 
seven  o'clock  train,  —  none  till  after  nine. 

"I  think  I  should  have  fainted  had  not  the 
turtle  just  then  begun  crawling  off.    I  was  weak 


44    THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

and  dizzy;  but  there,  there  in  the  sand,  were  the 
eggs !  and  Agassiz !  and  the  great  book  !  And  I 
cleared  the  fence,  and  the  forty  miles  that  lay  be- 
tween me  and  Cambridge,  at  a  single  jump.  He 
should  have  them,  trains  or  no.  Those  eggs  should 
go  to  Agassiz  by  seven  o'clock,  if  I  had  to  gallop 
every  mile  of  the  way.  Forty  miles !  Any  horse 
could  cover  it  in  three  hours,  if  he  had  to;  and 
upsetting  the  astonished  turtle,  I  scooped  out  her 
round  white  eggs. 

"  On  a  bed  of  sand  in  the  bottom  of  the  pail  I 
laid  them,  with  what  care  my  trembling  fingers 
allowed;  filled  in  between  them  with  more  sand; 
so  with  another  layer  to  the  rim ;  and  covering 
all  smoothly  with  more  sand,  I  ran  back  for  my 
horse. 

"  That  horse  knew,  as  well  as  I,  that  the  turtles 
had  laid,  and  that  he  was  to  get  those  eggs  to 
Agassiz.  He  turned  out  of  that  field  into  the  road 
on  two  wheels,  a  thing  he  had  not  done  for  twenty 
years,  doubling  me  up  before  the  dashboard,  the 
pail  of  eggs  miraculously  lodged  between  my 
knees. 

"  I  let  him  out.  If  only  he  could  keep  this 
pace  all  the  way  to  Cambridge !  or  even  halfway 


TURTLE   EGGS  FOR  AGASSIZ    45 

there ;  and  I  would  have  time  to  finish  the  trip 
on  foot.  I  shouted  him  on,  holding  to  the  dasher 
with  one  hand,  the  pail  of  eggs  with  the  other, 
not  daring  to  get  off  my  knees,  though  the  bang 
on  them,  as  we  pounded  down  the  wood-road, 
was  terrific.  But  nothing  must  happen  to  the 
eggs ;  they  must  not  be  jarred,  or  even  turned 
over  in  the  sand  before  they,  came  to  Agassiz. 

"  In  order  to  get  out  on  the  pike  it  was  neces- 
sary to  drive  back  away  from  Boston  toward  the 
town.  We  had  nearly  covered  the  distance,  and 
were  rounding  a  turn  from  the  woods  into  the 
open  fields,  when,  ahead  of  me,  at  the  station  it 
seemed,  I  heard  the  quick  sharp  whistle  of  a  lo- 
comotive. 

"What  did  it  mean?  Then  followed  the  puff 
puff,  puff,  of  a  starting  train.  But  what  train? 
Which  way  going  ?  And  jumping  to  my  feet  for 
a  longer  view,  I  pulled  into  a  side  road,  that 
paralleled  the  track,  and  headed  hard  for  the 
station. 

"We  reeled  along.  The  station  was  still  out  of 
sight,  but  from  behind  the  bushes  that  shut  it  from 
view,  rose  the  smoke  of  a  moving  engine.  It  was 
perhaps  a  mile  away,  but  we  were  approaching, 


46     THF  FACE   OF  THE  FIELDS 

head  on,  and  topping  a  little  hill  I  swept  down 
upon  a  freight  train,  the  black  smoke  pouring 
from  the  stack,  as  the  mighty  creature  got  itself 
together  for  its  swift  run  down  the  rails. 

"My  horse  was  on  the  gallop,  going  with  the 
track,  and  straight  toward  the  coming  train.  The 
sight  of  it  almost  maddened  me  —  the  bare 
thought  of  it,  on  the  road  to  Boston !  On  I  went; 
on  it  came,  a  half —  a  quarter  of  a  mile  between 
us,  when  suddenly  my  road  shot  out  along  an 
unfenced  field  with  only  a  level  stretch  of  sod 
between  me  and  the  engine. 

"With  a  pull  that  lifted  the  horse  from  his  feet, 
I  swung  him  into  the  field  and  sent  him  straight 
as  an  arrow  for  the  track.  That  train  should  carry 
me  and  my  eggs  to  Boston ! 

"  The  engineer  pulled  the  rope.  He  saw  me 
standing  up  in  the  rig,  saw  my  hat  blow  off,  saw 
me  wave  my  arms,  saw  the  tin  pail  swing  in  my 
teeth,  and  he  jerked  out  a  succession  of  sharp 
halts !  But  it  was  he  who  should  halt,  not  I ;  and 
on  we  went,  the  horse  with  a  flounder  landing  the 
carriage  on  top  of  the  track. 

"  The  train  was  already  grinding  to  a  stop ;  but 
before  it  was  near  a  standstill,  I  had  backed  off 


TURTLE   EGGS   FOR  AGASSIZ    47 

the  track,  jumped  out,  and,  running  down  the  rails 
with  the  astonished  engineers  gaping  at  me,  swung 
aboard  the  cab. 

"They  offered  no  resistance;  they  hadn't  had 
time.  Nor  did  they  have  the  disposition,  for  I 
looked  strange,  not  to  say  dangerous.  Hatless, 
dew-soaked,  smeared  with  yellow  mud,  and  hold- 
ing, as  if  it  were  a  baby  or  a  bomb,  a  little  tin 
pail  of  sand. 

" '  Crazy,'  the  fireman  muttered,  looking  to  the 
engineer  for  his  cue. 

"  I  had  been  crazy,  perhaps,  but  I  was  not  crazy 
now. 

"  'Throw  her  wide  open/  I  commanded.  'Wide 
open !  These  are  fresh  turtle  eggs  for  Professor 
Agassiz  of  Cambridge.  He  must  have  them  be- 
fore breakfast/ 

"Then  they  knew  I  was  crazy,  and  evidently 
thinking  it  best  to  humor  me,  threw  the  throttle 
wide  open,  and  away  we  went. 

"I  kissed  my  hand  to  the  horse,  grazing  un- 
concernedly in  the  open  field,  and  gave  a  smile 
to  my  crew.  That  was  all  I  could  give  them,  and 
hold  myself  and  the  eggs  together.  But  the  smile 
was  enough.  And  they  smiled  through  their  smut 


48     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

at  me,  though  one  of  them  held  fast  to  his  shovel, 
while  the  other  kept  his  hand  upon  a  big  ugly 
wrench.  Neither  of  them  spoke  to  me,  but  above 
the  roar  of  the  swaying  engine  I  caught  enough 
of  their  broken  talk  to  understand  that  they  were 
driving  under  a  full  head  of  steam,  with  the  in- 
tention of  handing  me  over  to  the  Boston  police, 
as  perhaps  the  safest  way  of  disposing  of  me. 

"  I  was  only  afraid  that  they  would  try  it  at 
the  next  station.  But  that  station  whizzed  past 
without  a  bit  of  slack,  and  the  next,  and  the  next ; 
when  it  came  over  me  that  this  was  the  through 
freight,  which  should  have  passed  in  the  night, 
and  was  making  up  lost  time. 

"  Only  the  fear  of  the  shovel  and  the  wrench 
kept  me  from  shaking  hands  with  both  men  at 
this  discovery.  But  I  beamed  at  them ;  and  they 
at  me.  I  was  enjoying  it.  The  unwonted  jar  be- 
neath my  feet  was  wrinkling  my  diaphragm  with 
spasms  of  delight.  And  the  fireman  beamed  at  the 
engineer,  with  a  look  that  said,  'See  the  lunatic 
grin ;  he  likes  it ! ' 

"He  did  like  it.  How  the  iron  wheels  sang  to 
me  as  they  took  the  rails  !  How  the  rushing  wind 
in  my  ears  sang  to  me !  From  my  stand  on  the 


TURTLE   EGGS   FOR  AGASSIZ    49 

fireman's  side  of  the  cab  I  could  catch  a  glimpse 
of  the  track  just  ahead  of  the  engine,  where  the 
ties  seemed  to  leap  into  the  throat  of  the  mile- 
devouring  monster.  The  joy  of  it !  of  seeing  space 
swallowed  by  the  mile  ! 

"I  shifted  the  eggs  from  hand  to  hand  and 
thought  of  my  horse,  of  Agassiz,  of  the  great 
book,  of  my  great  luck,  —  luck,  —  luck,  —  until 
the  multitudinous  tongues  of  the  thundering  train 
were  all  chiming  '  luck  !  luck  !  luck  ! '  They 
knew !  they  understood  !  This  beast  of  fire  and 
tireless  wheels  was  doing  its  best  to  get  the  eggs 
to  Agassiz ! 

"  We  swung  out  past  the  Blue  Hills,  and  yon- 
der flashed  the  morning  sun  from  the  towering 
dome  of  the  State  House.  I  might  have  leaped 
from  the  cab  and  run  the  rest  of  the  way  on  foot, 
had  I  not  caught  the  eye  of  the  engineer  watch- 
ing me  narrowly.  I  was  not  in  Boston  yet,  nor  in 
Cambridge  either.  I  was  an  escaped  lunatic,  who 
had  held  up  a  train,  and  forced  it  to  carry  me  to 
Boston. 

"  Perhaps  I  had  overdone  the  lunacy  business. 
Suppose  these  two  men  should  take  it  into  their 
heads  to  turn  me  over  to  the  police,  whether  I 


50    THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

would  or  no  ?  I  could  never  explain  the  case  in 
time  to  get  the  eggs  to  Agassiz.  I  looked  at  my 
watch.  There  were  still  a  few  minutes  left,  in 
which  I  might  explain  to  these  men,  who,  all  at 
once,  had  become  my  captors.  But  it  was  too 
late.  Nothing  could  avail  against  my  actions, 
my  appearance,  and  my  little  pail  of  sand. 

"  I  had  not  thought  of  my  appearance  before. 
Here  I  was,  face  and  clothes  caked  with  yellow 
mud,  my  hair  wild  and  matted,  my  hat  gone, 
and  in  my  full-grown  hands  a  tiny  tin  pail  of 
sand,  as  if  I  had  been  digging  all  night  with  a 
tiny  tin  shovel  on  the  shore !  And  thus  to  ap- 
pear in  the  decent  streets  of  Boston  of  a  Sunday 
morning ! 

"  I  began  to  feel  like  a  lunatic.  The  situation 
was  serious,  or  might  be,  and  rather  desperately 
funny  at  its  best.  I  must  in  some  way  have  shown 
my  new  fears,  for  both  men  watched  me  more 
sharply. 

"  Suddenly,  as  we  were  nearing  the  outer 
freight-yard,  the  train  slowed  down  and  came  to 
a  stop.  I  was  ready  to  jump,  but  I  had  no  chance. 
They  had  nothing  to  do,  apparently,  but  to  guard 
me.   I  looked  at  my  watch  again.  What  time  we 


TURTLE   EGGS  FOR  AGASSIZ    51 

had  made !  It  was  only  six  o'clock,  with  a  whole 
hour  to  get  to  Cambridge. 

"  But  I  did  n't  like  this  delay.  Five  minutes  — 
ten  —  went  by. 

" '  Gentlemen,'  I  began,  but  was  cut  short  by 
an  express  train  coming  past.  We  were  moving 
again,  on  —  into  a  siding ;  on  —  on  to  the  main 
track ;  and  on  with  a  bump  and  a  crash  and  a 
succession  of  crashes,  running  the  length  of  the 
train ;  on  at  a  turtle's  pace,  but  on,  —  when  the 
fireman,  quickly  jumping  for  the  bell-rope,  left 
the  way  to  the  step  free,  and  —  the  chance  had 


come! 


"  I  never  touched  the  step,  but  landed  in  the 
soft  sand  at  the  side  of  the  track,  and  made  a  line 
for  the  yard  fence. 

"  There  was  no  hue  or  cry.  I  glanced  over  my 
shoulder  to  see  if  they  were  after  me.  Evidently 
their  hands  were  full,  and  they  did  n't  know  I  had 
gone. 

"  But  I  had  gone ;  and  was  ready  to  drop  over 
the  high  board-fence,  when  it  occurred  to  me  that 
I  might  drop  into  a  policeman's  arms.  Hanging 
my  pail  in  a  splint  on  top  of  a  post,  I  peered 
cautiously  over — a  very  wise  thing  to  do  before 


52     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

you  jump  a  high  board-fence.  There,  crossing  the 
open  square  toward  the  station,  was  a  big  burly- 
fellow  with  a  club  —  looking  for  me. 

"  I  flattened  for  a  moment,  when  some  one  in 
the  yard  yelled  at  me.  I  preferred  the  policeman, 
and  grabbing  my  pail  I  slid  over  to  the  street. 
The  policeman  moved  on  past  the  corner  of  the 
station  out  of  sight.  The  square  was  free,  and 
yonder  stood  a  cab ! 

"  Time  was  flying  now.  Here  was  the  last  lap. 
The  cabman  saw  me  coming,  and  squared  away. 
I  waved  a  paper  dollar  at  him,  but  he  only  stared 
the  more.  A  dollar  can  cover  a  good  deal,  but  I 
was  too  much  for  one  dollar.  I  pulled  out  another, 
thrust  them  both  at  him,  and  dodged  into  the 
cab,  calling,  4  Cambridge  ! ' 

"  He  would  have  taken  me  straight  to  the 
police  station,  had  I  not  said, '  Harvard  College. 
Professor  Agassiz's  house !  I  've  got  eggs  for 
Agassiz ' ;  and  pushed  another  dollar  up  at  him 
through  the  hole. 

"  It  was  nearly  half-past  six. 

"  '  Let  him  go ! '  I  ordered.  '  Here 's  another 
dollar  if  you  make  Agassiz's  house  in  twenty 
minutes.  Let  him  out.  Never  mind  the  police  ! ' 


TURTLE   EGGS  FOR  AGASSIZ    53 

"  He  evidently  knew  the  police,  or  there  were 
few  around  at  that  time  on  a  Sunday  morning. 
We  went  down  the  sleeping  streets,  as  I  had  gone 
down  the  wood-roads  from  the  pond  two  hours 
before,  but  with  the  rattle  and  crash  now  of  a  fire 
brigade.  Whirling  a  corner  into  Cambridge  Street, 
we  took  the  bridge  at  a  gallop,  the  driver  shout- 
ing out  something  in  Hibernian  to  a  pair  of  wav- 
ing arms  and  a  belt  and  brass  buttons. 

"  Across  the  bridge  with  a  rattle  and  jolt  that 
put  the  eggs  in  jeopardy,  and  on  over  the  cobble- 
stones, we  went.  Half-standing,  to  lessen  the  jar, 
I  held  the  pail  in  one  hand  and  held  myself  in 
the  other,  not  daring  to  let  go  even  to  look  at 
my  watch. 

"  But  I  was  afraid  to  look  at  the  watch.  I  was 
afraid  to  see  how  near  to  seven  o'clock  it  might 
be.  The  sweat  was  dropping  from  my  nose,  so 
close  was  I  running  to  the  limit  of  my  time. 

"  Suddenly  there  was  a  lurch,  and  I  dove  for- 
ward, ramming  my  head  into  the  front  of  the 
cab,  coming  up  with  a  rebound  that  landed  me 
across  the  small  of  my  back  on  the  seat,  and  sent 
half  of  my  pail  of  eggs  helter-skelter  over  the 
floor. 


54     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

"We  had  stopped.  Here  was  Agassiz's  house; 
and  not  taking  time  to  pick  up  the  scattered 
eggs,  I  tumbled  out,  and  pounded  at  the  door. 

"No  one  was  astir  in  the  house.  But  I  would 
stir  them.  And  I  did.  Right  in  the  midst  of  the 
racket  the  door  opened.  It  was  the  maid. 

"  '  Agassiz,'  I  gasped, '  I  want  Professor  Agas- 
siz,  quick  ! '  And  I  pushed  by  her  into  the  hall. 

"  '  Go  'way,  sir.  I  '11  call  the  police.  Professor 
Agassiz  is  in  bed.  Go  'way,  sir.' 

"  '  Call  him  —  Agassiz  —  instantly,  or  I  '11  call 
him  myself ! ' 

"But  I  didn't;  for  just  then  a  door  overhead 
was  flung  open,  a  white-robed  figure  appeared 
on  the  dim  landing  above,  and  a  quick  loud 
voice  called  excitedly,  — 

"  '  Let  him  in  !  Let  him  in  !  I  know  him.  He 
has  my  turtle  eggs  ! ' 

"And  the  apparition,  slipperless,  and  clad  in 
anything  but  an  academic  gown,  came  sailing 
down  the  stairs. 

"  The  maid  fled.  The  great  man,  his  arms  ex- 
tended, laid  hold  of  me  with  both  hands,  and 
dragging  me  and  my  precious  pail  into  his  study, 
with  a  swift,  clean  stroke  laid  open  one  of  the 


TURTLE  EGGS   FOR  AGASSIZ    55 

eggs,  as  the  watch  in  my  trembling  hands  ticked 
its  way  to  seven— as  if  nothing  unusual  were 
happening  to  the  history  of  the  world." 

"You  were  in  time  then?"  I  said. 

M  To  the  tick.  There  stands  my  copy  of  the 
great  book.  I  am  proud  of  the  humble  part  I  had 
in  it." 


Ill 

THE  EDGE  OF  NIGHT 


THE   EDGE   OF   NIGHT 


eyond  the  meadow,  nearly  half  a 
mile  away,  yet  in  sight  from  my 
window,  stands  an  apple  tree,  the 
last  of  an  ancient  line  that  once 
marked  the  boundary  between  the 
upper  and  lower  pastures.  For  an  apple  tree  it  is 
unspeakably  woeful,  and  bent,  and  hoary,  and 
grizzled,  with  suckers  from  feet  to  crown.  Un- 
kempt and  unesteemed,  it  attracts  only  the  cattle 
for  its  shade,  and  gives  to  them  alone  its  gnarly, 
bitter  fruit. 

But  that  old  tree  is  hollow,  trunk  and  limb ; 
and  if  its  apples  are  of  Sodom,  there  is  still  no 
tree  in  the  Garden  of  the  Hesperides,  none  even 
in  my  own  private  Eden,  carefully  kept  as  they 
are,  that  is  half  as  interesting — I  had  almost 
said,  as  useful.  Among  the  trees  of  the  Lord,  an 
apple  tree  that  bears  good  Baldwins  or  greenings 
or  rambos  comes  first  for  usefulness ;  but  when 
one  has  thirty-five  of  such  trees,  which  the  town 
has  compelled  one  to  trim  and  scrape  and  plas- 


'6o     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

ter-up  and  petticoat  against  the  grewsome  gypsy 
moth,  then  those  thirty-five  are  dull  indeed, 
compared  with  the  untrimmed,  unscraped,  un- 
plastered,  undressed  old  tramp  yonder  on  the 
knoll,  whose  heart  is  still  wide  open  to  the  birds 
and  beasts  —  to  every  small  traveler  passing  by 
who  needs,  perforce,  a  home,  a  hiding,  or  a  har- 
bor. 

When  I  was  a  small  boy  everybody  used  to 
put  up  overnight  at  grandfather's  —  for  grand- 
mother's wit  and  buckwheat  cakes,  I  think,  which 
were  known  away  down  into  Cape  May  County. 
It  was  so,  too,  with  grandfather's  wisdom  and 
brooms.  The  old  house  sat  in  behind  a  grove 
of  pin-oak  and  pine,  a  sheltered,  sheltering  spot, 
with  a  peddler's  stall  in  the  barn,  a  peddler's 
place  at  the  table,  a  peddler's  bed  in  the  herby 
garret,  a  boundless,  fathomless  feather-bed,  of  a 
piece  with  the  house  and  the  hospitality.  There 
were  larger  houses  and  newer,  in  the  neighbor- 
hood ;  but  no  other  house  in  all  the  region,  not 
even  the  tavern,  two  miles  farther  down  the 
Pike,  was  half  as  central,  or  as  homelike,  or  as 
full  of  sweet  and  juicy  gossip. 
-    The  old  apple  tree  yonder  between  the  woods 


THE   EDGE   OF   NIGHT  61 

and  the  meadow  is  as  central,  as  hospitable,  and, 
if  animals  communicate  with  one  another,  just  as 
full  of  neighborhood  news  as  was  grandfather's 
roof-tree. 

Did  I  say  none  but  the  cattle  seek  its  shade  *? 
Go  over  and  watch.  That  old  tree  is  no  decrepit, 
deserted  shack  of  a  house.  There  is  no  door-plate, 
there  is  no  christened  letter-box  outside  the  front 
fence,  because  the  birds  and  beasts  do  not  adver- 
tise their  houses  that  way.  But  go  over,  say,  to- 
ward evening,  and  sit  quietly  down  outside.  You 
will  not  wait  long,  for  the  doors  will  open  that 
you  may  enter  —  enter  into  a  home  of  the  fields, 
and,  a  little  way  at  least,  into  a  life  of  the  fields, 
for  this  old  tree  has  a  small  dweller  of  some  sort 
the  year  round. 

If  it  is  February  or  March  you  will  be  admit- 
ted by  my  owls.  They  take  possession  late  in 
winter  and  occupy  the  tree,  with  some  curious 
fellow  tenants,  until  early  summer.  I  can  count 
upon  these  small  screech-owls  by  February, — 
the  forlorn  month,  the  seasonless,  hopeless,  lifeless 
stretch  of  the  year,  but  for  its  owls,  its  thaws,  its 
lengthening  days,  its  cackling  pullets,  its  possi- 
bility of  swallows,  and  its  being  the  year's  end. 


62     THE   FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

At  least  the  ancients  called  February  the  year's 
end,  maintaining,  with  fine  poetic  sense,  that  the 
world  was  begun  in  March  ;  and  they  were  nearer 
the  beginnings  of  things  than  we  are. 

But  the  owls  come  in  February,  and  if  they 
are  not  swallows  with  the  spring,  they,  never- 
theless, help  winter  with  most  seemly  haste  into 
an  early  grave.  Yet  across  the  faded  February 
meadow  the  old  apple  tree  stands  empty  and 
drear  enough  —  until  the  shadows  of  the  night 
begin  to  fall. 

As  the  dusk  comes  down,  I  go  to  my  window 
and  watch.  I  cannot  see  him,  the  grim-beaked 
baron  with  his  hooked  talons,  his  ghostly  wings, 
his  night-seeing  eyes;  but  I  know  that  he  has 
come  to  his  window  in  the  turret  yonder  on  the 
darkening  sky,  and  that  he  watches  with  me.  I 
cannot  see  him  swoop  downward  over  the  ditches, 
nor  see  him  quarter  the  meadow,  beating,  dan- 
gling, dropping  between  the  flattened  tussocks ; 
nor  hear  him,  back  on  the  silent  shadows,  slant 
upward  again  to  his  turret.  Mine  are  human 
eyes,  human  ears.  Even  the  quick-eared  meadow- 
mouse  did  not  hear. 

But  I  have  been  belated  and  forced  to  cross 


THE   EDGE   OF   NIGHT  63 

this  wild  night-land  of  his;  and  I  have  felt  him 
pass  —  so  near  at  times  that  he  has  stirred  my 
hair,  by  the  wind,  dare  I  say,  of  his  mysterious 
wings'?  At  other  times  I  have  heard  him.  Often 
on  the  edge  of  night  I  have  listened  to  his  qua- 
vering, querulous  cry  from  the  elm-tops  below  me 
by  the  meadow.  But  oftener  I  have  watched  at 
the  casement  here  in  my  castle  wall. 

Away  yonder  on  the  borders  of  night,  dim  and 
gloomy,  looms  his  ancient  keep.  I  wait.  Soon 
on  the  deepened  dusk  spread  his  soft  wings,  out 
over  the  meadow  he  sails,  up  over  my  wooded 
height,  over  my  moat,  to  my  turret  tall,  as  silent 
and  unseen  as  the  soul  of  a  shadow,  except  he 
drift  across  the  face  of  the  full  round  moon,  or 
with  his  weird  cry  cause  the  dreaming  quiet  to 
stir  in  its  sleep  and  moan. 

Yes,  yes,  but  one  must  be  pretty  much  of  a 
child,  with  most  of  his  childish  things  not  yet  put 
away,  to  get  any  such  romance  out  of  a  rotten 
apple  tree,  plus  a  bunch  of  feathers  no  bigger  than 
one's  two  fists.  One  must  be  pretty  far  removed 
from  the  real  world,  the  live  world  that  swings, 
no  longer  through  the  heavens,  but  at  the  dis- 
tributing end  of  a  news  wire  —  pretty  far  removed 


64     THE   FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

to  spend  one's  precious  time  watching  screech- 
owls. 

And  so  one  is,  indeed,  —  sixteen  miles  re- 
moved by  space,  one  whole  day  by  post,  one 
whole  hour  by  engine  and  horse,  one  whole  half- 
minute  by  the  telephone  in  the  back  hall.  Lost ! 
cut  off  completely !  hopelessly  marooned ! 

I  fear  so.  Perhaps  I  must  admit  that  the  watch- 
ing of  owls  is  for  babes  and  sucklings,  not  for 
men  with  great  work  to  do,  that  is,  with  money 
to  make,  news  to  get,  office  to  hold,  and  clubs  to 
address.  For  babes  and  sucklings,  and,  possibly, 
for  those  with  a  soul  to  save,  yet  I  hasten  to 
avow  that  the  watching  of  owls  is  not  religion ; 
for  I  entirely  agree  with  our  Shelburne  essayist 
when  he  finds,  "  in  all  this  worship  of  nature," 
—  by  Traherne,  Rousseau,  Wordsworth,  Thoreau, 
and  those  who  seek  the  transfigured  world  of 
the  woods,  —  "there  is  a  strain  of  illusion  which 
melts  away  at  the  touch  of  the  greater  realities 
.  .  .  and  there  are  evils  against  which  its  seduc- 
tion is  of  no  avail." 

But  let  the  illusion  melt.  Other  worships  have 
shown  a  strain  of  illusion  at  times,  and  against 
certain  evils  been  of  small  avail.  And  let  it  be 


THE    EDGE  OF   NIGHT  65 

admitted  that  calling  regularly  at  an  old  apple 
tree  is  far  short  of  a  full  man's  work  in  the  world, 
even  when  such  calling  falls  outside  of  his  shop 
or  office-hours.  For  there  are  no  such  hours.  The 
business  of  life  allows  no  spare  time  any  more. 
One  cannot  get  rich  nowadays  in  office-hours,  nor 
become  great,  nor  keep  telegraphically  informed, 
nor  do  his  share  of  talking  and  listening.  Every- 
body but  the  plumber  and  paper-hanger  works 
overtime.  How  the  earth  keeps  up  a  necessary 
amount  of  whirling  in  the  old  twenty-four-hour 
limit  is  more  than  we  can  understand.  But  she 
can't  keep  up  the  pace  much  longer.  She  must 
have  an  extra  hour.  And  how  to  snatch  it  from 
the  tail-end  of  eternity  is  the  burning  cosmo- 
logical  question. 

And  this  is  the  burning  question  with  regard 
to  our  individual  whirling  —  How  to  add  time, 
or,  what  amounts  to  exactly  the  same,  How  to 
increase  the  whirling. 

There  have  been  many  hopeful  answers.  The 
whirl  has  been  vastly  accelerated.  The  fly-wheel 
of  the  old  horse  treadmill  is  now  geared  to  an 
electric  dynamo.  But  it  is  not  enough ;  it  is 
not  the  answer.  And  I  despair  of  the  answer — 


66     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

of  the  perfect  whirl,  the  perpetual,  invisible,  un- 
timable. 

Hence  the  apple  tree,  the  owls,  the  illusions, 
the  lost  hours — the  neglect  of  fortune  and  of 
soul !  But  then  you  may  worship  nature  and  still 
find  your  way  to  church ;  you  may  be  intensely 
interested  in  the  life  of  an  old  apple  tree  and  still 
cultivate  your  next-door  neighbor,  still  earn  all 
the  fresh  air  and  bread  and  books  that  your  chil- 
dren need. 

The  knoll  yonder  may  be  a  kind  of  High 
Place,  and  its  old  apple  tree  a  kind  of  altar  for 
you  when  you  had  better  not  go  to  church,  when 
your  neighbor  needs  to  be  let  alone,  when  your 
children  are  in  danger  of  too  much  bread  and  of 
too  many  books  —  for  the  time  when  you  are  in 
need  of  that  something  which  comes  only  out  of 
the  quiet  of  the  fields  at  the  close  of  day. 

"But  what  is  it?"  you  ask.  "Give  me  its 
formula."  I  cannot.  Yet  you  need  it  and  will  get 
it — something  that  cannot  be  had  of  the  day, 
something  that  Matthew  Arnold  comes  very  near 
suggesting  in  his  lines :  — 

The  evening  comes,  the  fields  are  still. 
The  tinkle  of  the  thirsty  rill, 


THE   EDGE   OF   NIGHT  67 

Unheard  all  day,  ascends  again  ; 
Deserted  is  the  half-mown  plain, 
Silent  the  swaths!   the  ringing  wain, 
The  mower's  cry,  the  dog's  alarms 
All  housed  within  the  sleeping  farms! 
The  business  of  the  day  is  done, 
The  last-left  haymaker  is  gone. 
And  from  the  thyme  upon  the  height 
And  from  the  elder-blossom  white 
And  pale  dog-roses  in  the  hedge, 
And  from  the  mint-plant  in  the  sedge, 
In  puffs  of  balm  the  night-air  blows 
The  perfume  which  the  day  foregoes. 

I  would  call  it  poetry,  if  it  were  poetry.  And  it  is 
poetry,  yet  it  is  a  great  deal  more.  It  is  poetry 
and  owls  and  sour  apples  and  toads ;  for  in  this 
particular  old  apple  dwells  also  a  tree-toad. 

It  is  curious  enough,  as  the  summer  dusk 
comes  on,  to  see  the  round  face  of  the  owl  in 
one  hole,  and  out  of  another  in  the  broken 
limb  above,  the  flat  weazened  face  of  the  tree- 
toad.  Philosophic  countenances  they  are,  masked 
with  wisdom,  both  of  them :  shrewd  and  pene- 
trating that  of  the  slit-eyed  owl ;  contemplative 
and  soaring  in  its  serene  composure  the  counte- 
nance of  the  transcendental  toad.  Both  creatures 


68     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

love  the  dusk ;  both  have  come  forth  to  their 
open  doors  in  order  to  watch  the  darkening; 
both  will  make  off  under  the  cover  —  one  for 
mice  and  frogs  over  the  meadow,  the  other  for 
slugs  and  insects  over  the  crooked,  tangled  limbs 
of  the  tree. 

It  is  strange  enough  to  see  them  together,  but 
it  is  stranger  still  to  think  of  them  together,  for  it 
is  just  such  prey  as  this  little  toad  that  the  owl 
has  gone  over  the  meadow  to  catch. 

Why  does  he  not  take  the  supper  ready  here 
on  the  shelf?  There  may  be  reasons  that  we, 
who  do  not  eat  tree-toad,  know  nothing  of;  but 
I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the  owl  has  never 
seen  his  fellow  lodger  in  the  doorway  above, 
though  he  must  often  have  heard  him  piping  his 
gentle  melancholy  in  the  gloaming,  when  his 
skin  cries  for  rain ! 

Small  wonder  if  they  have  never  met!  for  this 
gray,  squat,  disc-toed  little  monster  in  the  hole, 
or  flattened  on  the  bark  of  the  tree  like  a  patch 
of  lichen,  may  well  be  one  of  those  things  which 
are  hidden  from  the  sharp-eyed  owl.  Whatever 
purpose  be  attributed  to  his  peculiar  shape  and 
color,  —  protective,  obliterative,  mimicking,  —  it 


THE   EDGE   OF   NIGHT  69 

is  always  a  source  of  fresh  amazement,  the  way 
this  largest  of  our  hylas,  on  the  moss-marked 
rind  of  an  old  tree,  can  utterly  blot  himself  out 
before  your  staring  eyes. 

The  common  toads  and  all  the  frogs  have 
enemies  enough,  and  it  would  seem  from  the 
comparative  scarcity  of  the  tree-toads  that  they 
must  have  enemies,  too,  but  I  do  not  know  who 
they  are.  The  scarcity  of  the  tree-toads  is  some- 
thing of  a  puzzle,  and  all  the  more  to  me,  that, 
to  my  certain  knowledge,  this  toad  has  lived  in 
the  old  Baldwin  tree,  now,  for  five  years.  Per- 
haps he  has  been  several,  and  not  one ;  for  who 
can  tell  one  tree-toad  from  another  ?  Nobody ; 
and  for  that  reason  I  made,  some  time  ago,  a 
simple  experiment,  in  order  to  see  how  long  a 
tree-toad  might  live,  unprotected,  in  his  own 
natural  environment. 

Upon  moving  into  this  house,  about  seven 
years  ago,  we  found  a  tree-toad  living  in  the  big 
hickory  by  the  porch.  For  the  next  three  springs 
he  reappeared,  and  all  summer  long  we  would 
find  him,  now  on  the  tree,  now  on  the  porch, 
often  on  the  railing  and  backed  tight  up  against 
a  post.   Was  he  one  or  many  ?  we  asked.  Then 


70     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

we  marked  him ;  and  for  the  next  four  years  we 
knew  that  he  was  himself  alone.  How  many- 
more  years  he  might  have  lived  in  the  hickory 
for  us  all  to  pet,  I  should  like  to  know ;  but  last 
summer,  to  our  great  sorrow,  the  gypsy-moth 
killers,  poking  in  the  hole,  did  our  little  friend  to 
death. 

He  was  worth  many  worms. 

It  was  interesting,  it  was  very  wonderful  to  me, 
the  instinct  for  home  —  the  love  for  home  I 
should  like  to  call  it  —  that  this  humble  little 
creature  showed.  A  toad  is  an  amphibian  to  the 
zoologist ;  an  ugly  gnome  with  a  jeweled  eye  to 
the  poet ;  but  to  the  naturalist,  the  lover  of  life 
for  its  own  sake,  who  lives  next  door  to  his  toad, 
who  feeds  him  a  fly  or  a  fat  grub  now  and  then, 
who  tickles  him  to  sleep  with  a  rose  leaf,  who 
waits  as  thirstily  as  the  hilltop  for  him  to  call  the 
summer  rain,  who  knows  his  going  to  sleep  for 
the  winter,  his  waking  up  for  the  spring  —  to 
such  an  one  the  jeweled  eye  and  the  amphibious 
habits  are  but  the  forewords  of  a  long,  marvelous 
life-history. 

This  small  tree-toad  had  a  home,  had  it  in  his 
soul,  I  believe,  precisely  where  John   Howard 


THE  EDGE   OF    NIGHT  71 

Payne  had  it,  and  where  many  another  of  us  has 
it.  He  had  it  in  a  tree,  too,  —  in  a  hickory  tree, 
this  one  that  dwelt  by  my  house ;  he  had  it  in  an 
apple  tree,  that  one  yonder  across  the  meadow. 

"East,  west, 
Hame's  best," 

croaked  our  tree-toad  in  a  tremulous,  plaintive 
minor  that  wakened  memories  in  the  vague  twi- 
light of  more  old,  unhappy,  far-off  things  than  any 
other  voice  I  ever  knew. 

These  two  tree-toads  could  not  have  been  in- 
duced to  trade  houses,  the  hickory  for  the  apple, 
because  a  house  to  a  toad  means  home,  and  a 
home  is  never  in  the  market.  There  are  many 
more  houses  in  the  land  than  homes.  Most  of 
us  are  only  real-estate  dealers.  Many  of  us  have 
never  had  a  home ;  and  none  of  us  has  ever  had 
more  than  one.  There  can  be  but  one  —  mine 
—  and  that  has  always  been,  must  always  be,  as 
imperishable  as  memory,  and  as  far  beyond  all 
barter  as  the  gates  of  the  sunset  are  beyond  my 
horizon's  picket  fence  of  pines. 

The  toad  seems  to  feel  it  all,  but  feels  it  whole, 
not  analyzed  and  itemized  as  a  memory.  Here 
in  the  hickory  for  four  years  (for  seven,  I  am 


72     THE  FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

quite  sure)  he  lived,  single  and  alone.  He  would 
go  down  to  the  meadow  when  the  toads  gathered 
there  to  lay  their  eggs,  but  back  he  would  come, 
without  mate  or  companion,  to  his  tree.  Stronger 
than  love  of  kind,  than  love  of  mate,  constant 
and  dominant  in  his  slow  cold  heart  is  his  in- 
stinct for  home. 

If  I  go  down  to  the  orchard  and  bring  up 
from  the  apple  tree  another  toad  to  dwell  in  the 
hole  of  the  hickory,  I  shall  fail.  He  might  re- 
main for  the  day,  but  not  throughout  the  night, 
for  with  the  gathering  twilight  there  steals  upon 
him  an  irresistible  longing,  the  Heimweh  which  he 
shares  with  me ;  and  guided  by  it,  as  the  bee  and 
the  pigeon  and  the  dog  are  guided,  he  makes  his 
sure  way  back  to  the  orchard  home. 

Would  he  go  back  beyond  the  orchard,  over 
the  road,  over  the  wide  meadow,  over  to  the 
Baldwin  tree,  half  a  mile  away,  if  I  brought  him 
from  there?  We  shall  see.  During  the  coming 
summer  I  shall  mark  him  in  some  manner,  and 
bringing  him  here  to  the  hickory,  I  shall  then 
watch  the  old  apple  tree  yonder.  It  will  be  a 
hard,  perilous  journey.  But  his  longing  will  not 
let  him  rest ;  and  guided  by  his  mysterious  sense 


THE  EDGE  OF   NIGHT  73 

of  direction  —  for  this  one  place  —  he  will  arrive, 
I  am  sure,  or  he  will  die  on  the  way. 

Yet  I  could  wish  there  were  another  tree  here, 
besides  the  apple,  and  another  toad.  Suppose  he 
never  gets  back  ?  Only  one  toad  less  ?  A  great 
deal  more  than  that.  Here  in  the  old  Baldwin  he 
has  made  his  home  for  I  don't  know  how  long, 
hunting  over  its  world  of  branches  in  the  sum- 
mer, sleeping  down  in  its  deep  holes  during  the 
winter  —  down  under  the  chips  and  punk  and 
castings,  beneath  the  nest  of  the  owls,  it  may  be  ; 
for  my  toad  in  the  hickory  always  buried  him- 
self so,  down  in  the  debris  at  the  bottom  of  the 
hole,  where,  in  a  kind  of  cold  storage,  he  pre- 
served himself  until  thawed  out  by  the  spring. 
I  never  pass  the  old  apple  in  the  summer  but 
that  I  stop  to  pay  my  respects  to  the  toad ;  nor 
in  the  winter  that  I  do  not  pause  and  think  of 
him  asleep  in  there.  He  is  no  mere  toad  any 
more.  He  has  passed  into  a  genius  loci,  the  Guard- 
ian Spirit  of  the  tree,  warring  in  the  green  leaf 
against  worm  and  grub  and  slug,  and  in  the  dry 
leaf  hiding  himself,  a  heart  of  life,  within  the 
tree's  thin  ribs,  as  if  to  save  the  old  shell  to  an- 
other summer. 


74     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

A  toad  is  a  toad,  and  if  he  never  got  back  to 
the  tree  there  would  be  one  toad  less,  nothing 
more.  If  anything  more,  then  it  is  on  paper,  and 
it  is  cant,  not  toad  at  all.  And  so,  I  suppose, 
stones  are  stones,  trees  trees,  brooks  brooks — not 
books  and  tongues  and  sermons  at  all  —  except 
on  paper  and  as  cant.  Surely  there  are  many 
things  in  writing  that  never  had  any  other,  any 
real  existence,  especially  in  writing  that  deals 
with  the  out-of-doors.  One  should  write  care- 
fully about  one's  toad;  fearfully,  indeed,  when 
that  toad  becomes  one's  teacher ;  for  teacher  my 
toad  in  the  old  Baldwin  has  many  a  time  been. 

Often  in  the  summer  dusk  I  have  gone  over 
to  sit  at  his  feet  and  learn  some  of  the  things 
my  college  professors  could  not  teach  me.  I  have 
not  yet  taken  my  higher  degrees.  I  was  grad- 
uated A.  B.  from  college.  It  is  A.  B.  C.  that  I 
am  working  toward  here  at  the  old  apple  tree 
with  the  toad. 

Seating  myself  comfortably  at  the  foot  of  the 
tree,  I  wait ;  the  toad  comes  forth  to  the  edge  of 
his  hole  above  me,  settles  himself  comfortably, 
and  waits.  And  the  lesson  begins.  The  quiet  of 
the  summer  evening  steals  out  with  the  wood- 


THE   EDGE   OF   NIGHT  75 

shadows  and  softly  covers  the  fields.  We  do  not 
stir.  An  hour  passes.  We  do  not  stir.  Not  to 
stir  is  the  lesson  —  one  of  the  majors  in  this  grad- 
uate course  with  the  toad. 

The  dusk  thickens.  The  grasshoppers  begin  to 
strum ;  the  owl  slips  out  and  drifts  away ;  a  whip- 
poorwill  drops  on  the  bare  knoll  near  me,  clucks 
and  shouts  and  shouts  again,  his  rapid  repetition 
a  thousand  times  repeated  by  the  voices  that  call 
to  one  another  down  the  long  empty  aisles  of  the 
swamp ;  a  big  moth  whirs  about  my  head  and  is 
gone  ;  a  bat  flits  squeaking  past;  a  firefly  blazes, 
but  is  blotted  out  by  the  darkness,  only  to  blaze 
again,  and  again  be  blotted,  and  so  passes,  his 
tiny  lantern  flashing  into  a  night  that  seems  the 
darker  for  the  quick,  unsteady  glow. 

We  do  not  stir.  It  is  a  hard  lesson.  By  all  my 
other  teachers  I  had  been  taught  every  manner  of 
stirring,  and  this  unwonted  exercise  of  being  still 
takes  me  where  my  body  is  weakest,  and  it  puts 
me  painfully  out  of  breath  in  my  soul.  "  Wisdom 
is  the  principal  thing,"  my  other  teachers  would 
repeat,  "therefore  get  wisdom,  but  keep  exceed- 
ingly busy  all  the  time.  Step  lively.  Life  is  short. 
There  are  only  twenty-four  hours  to  the  day.    The 


76     THE   FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

Devil  finds  mischief  for  idle  hands  to  do.  Let  us 
then  be  up  and  doing  "  —  all  of  this  at  random 
from  one  of  their  lectures  on  "The  Simple  Life, 
or  the  Pace  that  Kills." 

Of  course  there  is  more  or  less  of  truth  in  this 
teaching  of  theirs.  A  little  leisure  has  no  doubt 
become  a  dangerous  thing  —  unless  one  spend  it 
talking  or  golfing  or  automobiling,  or  aeroplan- 
ing  or  elephant-killing,  or  in  some  other  divert- 
ing manner ;  otherwise  one's  nerves,  like  pulled 
candy,  might  set  and  cease  to  quiver;  or  one 
might  even  have  time  to  think. 

"Keep  going,"  —  I  quote  from  another  of  their 
lectures,  —  "  keep  going;  it  is  the  only  certainty 
you  have  against  knowing  whither  you  are  go- 
ing." I  learned  that  lesson  well.  See  me  go  — 
with  half  a  breakfast  and  the  whole  morning  pa- 
per ;  with  less  of  lunch  and  the  4.30  edition.  But 
I  balance  my  books,  snatch  the  evening  edition, 
catch  my  car,  get  into  my  clothes,  rush  out  to 
dinner,  and  spend  the  evening  lecturing  or  being 
lectured  to.  I  do  everything  but  think. 

But  suppose  I  did  think  ?  It  could  only  dis- 
turb me  —  my  politics,  or  ethics,  or  religion.  I 
had   better   let   the    editors  and  professors  and 


THE  EDGE   OF   NIGHT  77 

preachers  think  for  me.  The  editorial  office  is 
such  a  quiet  thought-inducing  place ;  as  quiet 
as  a  boiler  factory ;  and  the  thinkers  there,  from 
editor-in-chief  to  the  printer's  devil,  are  so  thought- 
ful for  the  size  of  the  circulation  !  And  the  college 
professors,  they  have  the  time  and  the  cloistered 
quiet  needed.  But  they  have  pitiful  salaries,  and 
enormous  needs,  and  their  social  status  to  worry 
over,  and  themes  to  correct,  and  a  fragmentary 
year  to  contend  with,  and  Europe  to  see  every 
summer,  and  —  Is  it  right  to  ask  them,  with  all 
this,  to  think  ?  We  will  ask  the  preachers  instead. 
They  are  set  apart  among  the  divine  and  eternal 
things;  they  are  dedicated  to  thought;  they  have 
covenanted  with  their  creeds  to  think  ;  it  is  their 
business  to  study,  but,  "  to  study  to  be  careful  and 
harmless." 

It  may  be,  after  all,  that  my  politics  and  ethics 
and  religion  need  disturbing,  as  the  soil  about  my 
fruit  trees  needs  it.  Is  it  the  tree?  or  is  it  the  soil 
that  I  am  trying  to  grow  ?  Is  it  I,  or  my  politics, 
my  ethics,  my  religion  ?  I  will  go  over  to  the  toad, 
no  matter  the  cost.  I  will  sit  at  his  feet,  where 
time  is  nothing,  and  the  worry  of  work  even  less. 
He  has  all  time  and  no  task  ;  he  is  not  obliged  to 


78     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

labor  for  a  living,  much  less  to  think.  My  other 
teachers  all  are;  they  are  all  professional  think- 
ers; their  thoughts  are  words:  editorials,  lectures, 
sermons,  —  livings.  I  read  them  or  listen  to 
them.  The  toad  sits  out  the  hour  silent,  think- 
ing, but  I  know  not  what,  nor  need  to  know.  To 
think  God's  thoughts  after  Him  is  not  so  high  as 
to  think  my  own  after  myself.  Why  then  ask  his 
of  the  toad,  and  so  interrupt  these  of  mine  %  In- 
stead we  will  sit  in  silence  and  watch  Altair  burn 
along  the  shore  of  the  sky,  and  overhead  Arctu- 
rus,  and  the  rival  fireflies  flickering  through  the 
leaves  of  the  apple  tree. 

The  darkness  has  come.  The  toad  is  scarcely 
a  blur  between  me  and  the  stars.  It  is  a  long  look 
from  him,  ten  feet  above  me,  on  past  the  fireflies 
to  Arcturus  and  the  regal  splendors  of  the  North- 
ern Crown  —  as  deep  and  as  far  a  look  as  the 
night  can  give,  and  as  only  the  night  can  give. 
Against  the  distant  stars,  these  ten  feet  between  me 
and  the  toad  shrink  quite  away ;  and  against  the 
light  far  off  yonder  near  the  pole,  the  firefly's  little 
lamp  becomes  a  brave  but  a  very  lesser  beacon. 

There  are  only  twenty-four  hours  to  the  day 
— to  the  day  and  the  night!  And  how  few  are 


THE   EDGE  OF   NIGHT  79 

left  to  that  quiet  time  between  the  light  and  the 
dark!  Ours  is  a  hurried  twilight.  We  quit  work 
to  sleep;  we  wake  up  to  work  again.  We  measure 
the  day  by  a  clock;  we  measure  the  night  by  an 
alarm  clock.  Life  is  all  ticked  off.  We  are  mur- 
dered by  the  second.  What  we  need  is  a  day  and 
a  night  with  wider  margins — a  dawn  that  comes 
more  slowly,  and  a  longer  lingering  twilight.  Life 
has  too  little  selvage ;  it  is  too  often  raw  and 
raveled.  Room  and  quiet  and  verge  are  what  we 
want,  not  more  dials  for  time,  nor  more  figures 
for  the  dials.  We  have  things  enough,  too,  more 
than  enough ;  it  is  space  for  the  things,  perspec- 
tive, and  the  right  measure  for  the  things  that  we 
lack  —  a  measure  not  one  foot  short  of  the  dis- 
tance between  us  and  the  stars. 

If  we  get  anything  out  of  the  fields  worth  while, 
it  will  be  this  measure,  this  largeness,  and  quiet. 
It  may  be  only  an  owl  or  a  tree-toad  that  we 
go  forth  to  see,  but  how  much  more  we  find  — 
things  we  cannot  hear  by  day,  things  long,  long 
forgotten,  things  we  never  thought  or  dreamed 
before. 

The  day  is  none  too  short,  the  night  none  too 
long;  but  all  too  narrow  is  the  edge  between. 


IV 

THE  SCARCITY   OF  SKUNKS 


THE  SCARCITY  OF  SKUNKS 


he  ragged  quilt  of  snow  had  slipped 
from  the  shoulders  of  the  slopes, 
the  gray  face  of  the  maple  swamp 
showed  a  flush  of  warmth,  and  the 
air,  out  of  the  south  to-day,  breathed 
life,  the  life  of  buds  and  catkins,  of  sappy  bark, 
oozing  gum,  and  running  water  —  the  life  of 
spring;  and  through  the  faintly  blending  breaths, 
as  a  faster  breeze  ran  down  the  hills,  I  caught  a 
new  and  unmistakable  odor,  single,  pointed,  pene- 
trating, the  sign  to  me  of  an  open  door  in  the 
wood-lot,  to  me,  indeed,  the  Open  Sesame  of 
spring. 

"  When  does  the  spring  come  ?  And  who  brings 
it?"  asks  the  watcher  in  the  woods.  "To  me 
spring  begins  when  the  catkins  on  the  alders  and 
the  pussy-willows  begin  to  swell,"  writes  Mr.  Bur- 
roughs, "when  the  ice  breaks  up  on  the  river  and 
the  first  sea-gulls  come  prospecting  northward." 
So  I  have  written,  also;  written  verses  even  to 
the  pussy-willow,  to  the  bluebird,  and  to  the  he- 


84     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

patica,  as  spring's  harbingers;  but  never  a  line  yet 
to  celebrate  this  first  forerunner  of  them  all,  the 
gentle  early  skunk.  For  it  is  his  presence,  blown 
far  across  the  February  snow,  that  always  ends 
my  New  England  winter  and  brings  the  spring. 
Of  course  there  are  difficulties,  poetically,  with 
the  wood-pussy.  I  don't  remember  that  even 
Whitman  tried  the  theme.  But,  perhaps,  the  good 
gray  poet  never  met  a  spring  skunk  in  the  streets 
of  Camden.  The  animal  is  comparatively  rare  in 
the  densely  populated  cities  of  New  Jersey. 

It  is  rare  enough  here  in  Massachusetts;  at 
least,  it  used  to  be;  though  I  think,  from  my 
observations,  that  the  skunk  is  quietly  on  the 
increase  in  New  England.  I  feel  very  sure  of  this 
as  regards  the  neighborhood  immediate  to  my 
farm. 

This  is  an  encouraging  fact,  but  hard  to  be 
believed,  no  doubt.  I,  myself,  was  three  or  four 
years  coming  to  the  conviction,  often  fearing 
that  this  little  creature,  like  so  many  others  of 
our  thinning  woods,  was  doomed  to  disappear. 
But  that  was  before  I  turned  to  keeping  hens.  I 
am  writing  these  words  as  a  naturalist  and 
nature-lover,  and  I  am  speaking  also  with  the 


THE  SCARCITY  OF  SKUNKS      85 

authority  of  one  who  keeps  hens.  Though  a  man 
give  his  life  to  the  study  of  the  skunk,  and  have 
not  hens,  he  is  nothing.  You  cannot  say,  "Go  to, 
I  will  write  an  essay  about  my  skunks."  There 
is  no  such  anomaly  as  professional  nature-loving, 
as  vocational  nature-writing.  You  cannot  go  into 
your  woods  and  count  your  skunks.  Not  until 
you  have  kept  hens  can  you  know,  can  you  even 
have  the  will  to  believe,  the  number  of  skunks 
that  den  in  the  dark  on  the  purlieus  of  your  farm. 

That  your  neighbors  keep  hens  is  not  enough. 
My  neighbors'  hens  were  from  the  first  a  stone  of 
stumbling  to  me.  That  is  a  peculiarity  of  next- 
door  hens.  It  would  have  been  better,  I  thought 
if  my  neighbors  had  had  no  hens.  I  had  moved 
in  among  these  half-farmer  folk,  and  while  I  found 
them  intelligent  enough,  I  immediately  saw  that 
their  attitude  toward  nature  was  wholly  wrong. 
They  seemed  to  have  no  conception  of  the  beauty 
of  nature.  Their  feeling  for  the  skunk  was  typi- 
cal :  they  hated  the  skunk  with  a  perfect  hatred, 
a  hatred  implacable,  illogical,  and  unpoetical,  it 
seemed  to  me,  for  it  was  born  of  their  chicken- 
breeding. 

Here  were  these  people  in  the  lap  of  nature, 


86     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

babes  in  nature's  arms,  knowing  only  to  draw  at 
her  breasts  and  gurgle,  or,  the  milk  failing,  to 
kick  and  cry.  Mother  Nature !  She  was  only  a 
bottle  and  rubber  nipple,  only  turnips  and  hay 
and  hens  to  them.  Nature  a  mother  ?  a  spirit  ?  a 
soul  ?  fragrance  %  harmony  ?  beauty  %  Only  when 
she  cackled  like  a  hen. 

Now  there  is  something  in  the  cackle  of  a 
hen,  a  very  great  deal,  indeed,  if  it  is  the  cackle 
of  your  own  hen.  But  the  morning  stars  did  not 
cackle  together,  and  there  is  still  a  solemn  mu- 
sic in  the  universe,  a  music  that  is  neither  an 
anvil  nor  a  barnyard  chorus.  Life  ought  to  mean 
more  than  turnips,  more  than  hay,  more  than 
hens  to  these  rural  people.  It  ought,  and  it  must. 
I  had  come  among  them.  And  what  else  was 
my  coming  but  a  divine  providence,  a  high  and 
holy  mission?  I  had  been  sent  unto  this  people 
to  preach  the  gospel  of  the  beauty  of  nature.  And 
I  determined  that  my  first  text  should  be  the 
skunk. 

All  of  this,  likewise,  was  previous  to  the  period 
of  my  hens. 

It  was  now,  as  I  have  said,  my  second  Febru- 
ary upon  the  farm,  when  the  telltale  wind  brought 


THE  SCARCITY  OF  SKUNKS      87 

down  this  poignant  message  from  the  wood-lot. 
The  first  spring  skunk  was  out !  I  knew  the  very 
stump  out  of  which  he  had  come  —  the  stump  of 
his  winter  den.  Yes,  and  the  day  before,  I  had 
actually  met  the  creature  in  the  woods,  for  he 
had  been  abroad  now  something  like  a  week. 
He  was  rooting  among  the  exposed  leaves  in  a 
sunny  dip,  and  I  approached  to  within  five  feet 
of  him,  where  I  stood  watching  while  he  grubbed 
in  the  thawing  earth.  Buried  to  the  shoulders  in 
the  leaves,  he  was  so  intent  upon  his  labor  that  he 
got  no  warning  of  my  presence.  My  neighbors 
would  have  knocked  him  over  with  a  club, — 
would  have  done  it  eagerly,  piously,  as  unto  the 
Lord.  What  did  the  Almighty  make  such  ver- 
min for,  anyway  ?  No  one  will  phrase  an  answer; 
but  every  one  will  act  promptly,  as  by  command 
and  revelation. 

I  stood  several  minutes  watching,  before  the 
little  wood-pussy  paused  and  pulled  out  his 
head  in  order  to  try  the  wind.  How  shocked  he 
was !  He  had  been  caught  off  his  guard,  and  in- 
stantly snapped  himself  into  a  startled  hump,  for 
the  whiff  he  got  on  the  wind  said  danger  !  —  and 
nigh  at  hand  !  Throwing  his  pointed  nose  straight 


88     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

into  the  air,  and  swinging  it  quickly  to  the  four 
quarters,  he  fixed  my  direction,  and  turning  his 
back  upon  me,  tumbled  off  in  a  dreadful  hurry 
for  home. 

This  interesting,  though  somewhat  tame,  ex- 
perience, would  have  worn  the  complexion  of 
an  adventure  for  my  neighbors,  a  bare  escape,  — 
a  ruined  Sunday  suit,  or,  at  least,  a  lost  jumper 
or  overalls.  I  had  never  lost  so  much  as  a  round- 
about in  all  my  life.  My  neighbors  had  had  in- 
numerable passages  with  this  ramping  beast,  most 
of  them  on  the  edge  of  the  dark,  and  many  of 
them  verging  hard  upon  the  tragic.  I  had  small 
patience  with  it  all.  I  wished  the  whole  neigh- 
borhood were  with  me,  that  I  might  take  this 
harmless  little  wood-pussy  up  in  my  arms  and 
teach  them  again  the  first  lesson  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven,  and  of  this  earthly  Paradise,  too,  and 
incidentally  put  an  end  forever  to  these  tales  of 
Sunday  clothes  and  nights  of  banishment  in  the 
barn. 

As  nobody  was  present  to  see,  of  course  I  did 
not  pick  the  wood-pussy  up.  I  did  not  need  to 
prove  to  myself  the  baselessness  of  these  wild 
misgivings ;  nor  did  I  wish,  without  good  cause, 


THE   SCARCITY   OF  SKUNKS      89 

further  to  frighten  the  innocent  creature.  I  had 
met  many  a  skunk  before  this,  and  nothing  of 
note  ever  had  happened.  Here  was  one,  taken 
suddenly  and  unawares,  and  what  did  he  do? 
He  merely  winked  and  blinked  vacantly  at  me 
over  the  snow,  trying  vainly  to  adjust  his  eyes  to 
the  hard  white  daylight,  and  then  timidly  made 
off  as  fast  as  his  pathetic  legs  could  carry  him, 
fetching  a  compass  far  around  toward  his  den. 

I  accompanied  him,  partly  to  see  him  safely 
home,  but  more  to  study  him  on  the  way,  for 
my  neighbors  would  demand  something  else 
than  theory  and  poetry  of  my  new  gospel :  they 
would  require  facts.  Facts  they  should  have. 

I  had  been  a  long  time  coming  to  my  mind 
concerning  the  skunk.  I  had  been  thinking  years 
about  him;  and  during  the  previous  summer 
(my  second  here  on  the  farm)  I  had  made  a  care- 
ful study  of  the  creature's  habits,  so  that  even 
now  I  had  in  hand  material  of  considerable  bulk 
and  importance,  showing  the  very  great  useful- 
ness of  the  animal.  Indeed,  I  was  about  ready  to 
embody  my  beliefs  and  observations  in  a  mono- 
graph, setting  forth  the  need  of  national  protec- 
tion—  of  a  Committee  of  One  Hundred,  say,  of 


9o     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

continental  scope,  to  look  after  the  preservation 
and  further  introduction  of  the  skunk  as  the 
friend  and  ally  of  man,  as  the  most  useful  of  all 
our  insectivorous  creatures,  bird  or  beast. 

What,  may  I  ask,  was  this  one  of  mine  doing 
here  on  the  edge  of  the  February  woods  %  He  was 
grubbing.  He  had  been  driven  out  of  his  winter 
bed  by  hunger,  and  he  had  been  driven  out  into 
the  open  snowy  sunshine  by  the  cold,  because  the 
nights  (he  is  nocturnal)  were  still  so  chill  that 
the  soil  would  freeze  at  night  past  his  ploughing. 
Thus  it  chanced,  at  high  noon,  that  I  came  upon 
him,  grubbing  among  my  soft,  wet  leaves,  and 
grubbing  for  nothing  less  than  obnoxious  in- 
sects ! 

My  heart  warmed  to  him.  He  was  ragged 
and  thin,  he  was  even  weak,  I  thought,  by  the 
way  he  staggered  as  he  made  off.  It  had  been  a 
hard  winter  for  men  and  for  skunks,  particularly 
hard  for  skunks  on  account  of  the  unbroken  suc- 
cession of  deep  snows.  This  skunk  had  been 
frozen  into  his  den,  to  my  certain  knowledge, 
since  the  last  of  November. 

Nature  is  a  severe  mother.  The  hunger  of  this 
starved  creature  !  To  be  put  to  bed  without  even 


THE   SCARCITY   OF   SKUNKS      91 

the  broth,  and  to  be  locked  in,  half  awake,  for 
nearly  three  months.  Poor  little  beastie !  Per- 
haps he  had  n't  intelligence  enough  to  know 
that  those  gnawings  within  him  were  pain.  Per- 
haps our  sympathy  is  all  agley.  Perhaps.  But 
we  are  bound  to  feel  it  when  we  watch  him 
satisfying  his  pangs  with  the  pestiferous  insects 
of  our  own  wood-lot. 

I  saw  him  safely  home,  and  then  returned  to 
examine  the  long  furrows  he  had  ploughed  out 
among  the  leaves.  I  found  nothing  to  show  what 
species  of  insects  he  had  eaten,  but  it  was  enough 
to  know  that  he  had  been  bent  on  bugs  — gypsy- 
moth  eggs,  maybe,  on  the  underside  of  some  stick 
or  stone,  where  they  had  escaped  the  keen  eye  of 
the  tree-warden.  We  are  greatly  exercised  over 
this  ghastly  caterpillar.  But  is  it  entomologists, 
and  national  appropriations,  and  imported  para- 
sites that  we  need  to  check  the  ravaging  plague  ? 
These  things  might  help,  doubtless;  but  I  was 
intending  to  show  in  my  monograph  that  it  is 
only  skunks  we  need;  it  is  the  scarcity  of  skunks 
that  is  the  whole  trouble  —  and  the  abundance 
of  cats. 
,  My  heart  warmed,  I  say,  as  I  watched  my  one 


92     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

frail  skunk  here  by  the  snowy  woodside,  and  it 
thrilled  as  I  pledged  him  protection,  as  I  acknow- 
ledged his  right  to  the  earth,  his  right  to  share 
life  and  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness  with 
me.  He  could  have  only  a  small  part  in  my  life, 
doubtless,  but  I  could  enter  largely  into  his,  and 
we  could  live  in  amity  together  —  in  amity  here 
on  this  bit  of  the  divine  earth,  anyhow,  if  nowhere 
else  under  heaven. 

This  was  along  in  February,  and  I  was  begin- 
ning to  set  my  hens. 

A  few  days  later,  in  passing  through  the  wood- 
lot,  I  was  surprised  and  delighted  to  see  three 
skunks  in  the  near  vicinity  of  the  den,  —  resi- 
dents evidently  of  the  stump  !  "  Think  !  "  I  ex- 
claimed to  myself,  "  think  of  the  wild  flavor  to 
this  tame  patch  of  woods !  And  the  creatures  so 
rare,  too,  and  beneficial!  They  multiply  rapidly, 
though,"  I  thought,  "and  I  ought  to  have  a  fine 
lot  of  them  by  fall.  I  shall  stock  the  farm  with 
them." 

This  was  no  momentary  enthusiasm.  In  a  book 
that  I  had  published  some  years  before  I  had 
stoutly  championed  the  skunk.  "  Like  every 
predatory  creature,"  I  wrote,  "the  skunk  more 


THE  SCARCITY   OF   SKUNKS      93 

than  balances  his  debt  for  corn  and  chickens  by 
his  destruction  of  obnoxious  vermin.  He  feeds 
upon  insects  and  mice,  destroying  great  numbers 
of  the  latter  by  digging  out  the  nests  and  eat- 
ing the  young.  But  we  forget  our  debt  when  the 
chickens  disappear,  no  matter  how  few  we  lose. 
Shall  we  ever  learn  to  say,  when  the  red-tail 
swoops  among  the  pigeons,  when  the  rabbits  get 
into  the  cabbage,  when  the  robins  rifle  the  cherry 
trees,  and  when  the  skunk  helps  himself  to  a  hen 
for  his  Thanksgiving  dinner  —  shall  we  ever 
learn  to  love  and  understand  the  fitness  of  things 
out-of-doors  enough  to  say,  ■  But  then,  poor 
beastie,  thou  maun  live  '?  " 

Since  writing  those  warm  lines  I  had  made 
further  studies  upon  the  skunk,  all  establishing 
the  more  firmly  my  belief  that  there  is  a  big  bal- 
ance to  the  credit  of  the  animal.  Meantime,  too, 
I  had  bought  this  small  farm,  with  a  mowing  field 
and  an  eight-acre  wood-lot  on  it;  with  certain 
liens  and  attachments  on  it,  also,  due  to  human 
mismanagement  and  to  interference  with  the 
course  of  Nature  in  the  past.  Into  the  orchard, 
for  instance,  had  come  the  San  Jose  scale;  into 
the  wood-lot  had  crawled  the  gypsy-moth  —  hu- 


94    THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

man  blunders!  Under  the  sod  of  the  mowing 
land  had  burrowed  the  white  grub  of  the  June- 
bugs.  On  the  whole  fourteen  acres  rested  the 
black  shadow  of  an  insect  plague.  Nature  had 
been  interfered  with  and  thwarted.  Man  had  taken 
things  into  his  own  clumsy  hands.  It  should  be 
so  no  longer  on  these  fourteen  acres.  I  held  the 
deed  to  these,  not  for  myself,  nor  for  my  heirs, 
but  for  Nature.  Over  these  few  acres  the  winds 
of  heaven  should  blow  free,  the  birds  should  sing, 
the  flowers  should  grow,  and  through  the  gloam- 
ing, unharmed  and  unaffrighted,  the  useful  skunk 
should  take  his  own  sweet  way. 

The  preceding  summer  had  been  a  season  re- 
markable for  the  ravages  of  the  June-bug.  The 
turf  in  my  mowing  went  all  brown  and  dead  sud- 
denly in  spite  of  frequent  rains.  No  cause  for  the 
trouble  showed  on  the  surface  of  the  field.  You 
could  start  and  with  your  hands  roll  up  the  tough 
sod  by  the  yard,  as  if  a  clean-cutting  knife  had 
been  run  under  it  about  an  inch  below  the  crowns. 
It  peeled  off  under  your  feet  in  great  flakes.  An 
examination  of  the  soil  brought  to  light  the  big 
fat  grubs  of  the  June-bugs,  millions  of  the  ghastly 
monsters !  They  had  gone  under  the  grass,  eating 


THE   SCARCITY   OF  SKUNKS      95 

off  the  roots  so  evenly  and  so  thoroughly  that 
not  a  square  foot  of  green  remained  in  the  whole 
field. 

It  was  here  that  the  skunk  did  his  good  work 
(I  say  "  the  skunk,"  for  there  was  only  one  on  the 
farm  that  summer,  I  think).  I  would  go  into  the 
field  morning  after  morning  to  count  the  holes  he 
had  made  during  the  night  in  his  hunt  for  the 
grubs.  One  morning  I  got  over  a  hundred  holes, 
all  of  them  dug  since  last  sundown,  and  each  hole 
representing  certainly  one  grub,  possibly  more; 
for  the  skunk  would  hear  or  smell  his  prey  at 
work  in  the  soil  before  attempting  to  dig. 

A  hundred  grubs  for  one  night,  by  one  skunk  ! 
It  took  me  only  a  little  while  to  figure  out  the 
enormous  number  of  grubs  that  a  fair-sized  family 
of  skunks  would  destroy  in  a  summer.  A  family 
of  skunks  would  rid  my  farm  of  the  pest  in  a 
single  summer  and  make  inroads  on  the  grubs  of 
the  entire  community. 

Ah !  the  community !  the  ignorant,  short- 
sighted, nature-hating  community  !  What  chance 
had  a  family  of  skunks  in  this  community  ?  And 
the  fire  of  my  mission  burned  hot  within  me. 

And  so  did  my  desire  for  more  skunks.  My  hay 


96     THE  FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

crop  was  short,  was  nil,  in  fact,  for  the  hayfield 
was  as  barren  of  green  as  the  hen-yard.  I  had  to 
have  it  ploughed  and  laid  down  again  to  grass. 
And  all  because  of  this  scarcity  of  skunks. 

Now,  as  the  green  of  the  springing  blades  be- 
gan to  show  through  the  melting  snow,  it  was 
with  immense  satisfaction  that  I  thought  of  the 
three  skunks  under  the  stump.  That  evening  I 
went  across  to  my  neighbor's,  the  milkman's,  and 
had  a  talk  with  him  over  the  desirability,  the  ne- 
cessity indeed,  of  encouraging  the  skunks  about 
us.  I  told  him  a  good  many  things  about  these 
harmless  and  useful  animals  that,  with  all  his 
farming  and  chicken-raising,  he  had  never  known. 

But  these  rural  folk  are  quite  difficult.  It  is  hard 
to  teach  them  anything  worth  while,  so  hope- 
lessly surrounded  are  they  with  things  —  common 
things.  If  I  could  only  get  them  into  a  college 
class-room  —  removed  some  way  from  hens  and 
hoes  —  I  might,  at  least,  put  them  into  a  receptive 
attitude.  But  that  cannot  be.  Perhaps,  indeed,  I 
demand  too  much  of  them.  For,  after  all,  it  takes 
a  naturalist,  a  lover  of  the  out-of-doors,  to  appre- 
ciate the  beautiful  adjustments  in  nature.  A  mere 
farmer  can  hardly  do  it.   One  needs  a  keen  eye, 


THE  SCARCITY  OF  SKUNKS     97 

but  a  certain  aloofness  of  soul  also,  for  the  deeper 
meaning  and  poetry  of  nature.  One  needs  to  spend 
a  vacation,  at  least,  in  the  wilderness  and  solitary 
place,  where  no  other  human  being  has  ever  come, 
and  there,  where  the  animals  know  man  only  as  a 
brother,  go  to  the  school  of  the  woods  and  study 
the  wild  folk,  one  by  one,  until  he  discovers  them 
personally,  temperamentally,  all  their  likes  and 
dislikes,  their  little  whimseys,  freaks,  and  fancies 
—  all  of  this,  there,  far  removed  from  the  canker- 
ing cares  of  hens  and  chickens,  for  the  sake  of 
the  right  attitude  toward  nature. 

My  nearest  neighbor  had  never  been  to  the 
wilderness.  He  lacked  imagination,  too,  and  a 
ready  pen.  Yet  he  promised  not  to  kill  my  three 
skunks  in  the  stump;  a  rather  doubtful  pledge, 
perhaps,  but  at  least  a  beginning  toward  the  new 
earth  I  hoped  to  see. 

Now  it  was  perfectly  well  known  to  me  that 
skunks  will  eat  chickens  if  they  have  to.  But  I 
had  had  chickens  —  a  few  hens  —  and  had  never 
been  bothered  by  skunks.  I  kept  my  hens  shut 
up,  of  course,  in  a  pen  —  the  only  place  for  a  hen 
outside  of  a  pie.  I  knew,  too,  that  skunks  like 
honey,  that  they  had  even  tampered  with  my 


98     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

hives,  reaching  in  at  night  through  the  wide  sum- 
mer entrances  and  tearing  out  the  brood  combs. 
But  I  never  lost  much  by  these  depredations. 
What  I  felt  more  was  the  destruction  of  the  wild 
bees  and  wasps  and  ground-nesting  birds,  by  the 
skunks. 

But  these  were  trifles !  What  were  a  few  chick- 
ens, bees,  yellow-jackets,  and  even  the  occasional 
bird's-nest,  against  the  hay-devouring  grubs  of 
the  June-bug !  And  as  for  the  characteristic  odor 
which  drifted  in  now  and  again  with  the  evening 
breeze,  that  had  come  to  have  a  pleasant  quality 
for  me,  floating  down  across  my  two  wide  acres 
of  mowing. 

February  passed  gently  into  March,  and  my 
chickens  began  to  hatch.  Every  man  must  raise 
chickens  at  some  period  of  his  life,  and  I  was 
starting  in  for  my  turn  now.  Hay  had  been  my 
specialty  heretofore,  making  two  blades  grow 
where  there  had  been  one  very  thin  one.  But  once 
your  two  acres  are  laid  down,  and  you  have  a 
stump  full  of  skunks,  near  by,  against  the  rav- 
ages of  the  June-bugs,  then  there  is  nothing  for 
you  but  chickens  or  something,  while  you  wait. 
I  got  Rhode  Island  Reds,  fancy  exhibition  stock, 


THE   SCARCITY   OF   SKUNKS      99 

—  for  what  is  the  use  of  chickens  if  you  cannot 
take  them  to  the  show? 

The  chickens  began  to  hatch,  little  downy  balls 
of  yellow,  with  their  pedigrees  showing  right 
through  the  fuzz.  How  the  sixty  of  them  grew  ! 
I  never  lost  one.  And  now  the  second  batch  of 
sitters  would  soon  be  ready  to  come  off. 

Then  one  day,  at  the  morning  count,  five  of 
one  hen's  brood  were  gone !  I  counted  again.  I 
counted  all  the  other  broods.  Five  were  gone ! 

My  nearest  neighbor  had  cats,  mere  barn  cats, 
as  many  as  ten,  at  the  least.  I  had  been  suspicious 
of  those  cats  from  the  first.  So  I  got  a  gun.  Then 
more  of  my  chickens  disappeared.  I  could  count 
only  forty-seven. 

I  shifted  the  coop,  wired  it  in,  and  stretched  a 
wire  net  over  the  top  of  the  run.  Nothing  could 
get  in,  nor  could  a  chicken  get  out.  All  the  time 
I  was  waiting  for  the  cat. 

A  few  nights  after  the  moving  of  the  coop  a 
big  hole  was  dug  under  the  wire  fence  of  the  run, 
another  hole  under  the  coop,  and  the  entire  brood 
of  Rhode  Island  Reds  was  taken. 

Then  I  took  the  gun  and  cut  across  the  pas- 
ture to  my  neighbor's. 


ioo    THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

"Hard  luck,"  he  said.  "It's  a  big  skunk. 
Here,  you  take  these  traps,  and  you  '11  catch  him ; 
anybody  can  catch  a  skunk." 

And  I  did  catch  him.  I  killed  him,  too,  in  spite 
of  the  great  scarcity  of  the  creatures.  Yet  I  was 
sorry,  and,  perhaps,  too  hasty;  for  catching  him 
near  the  coop  was  no  proof.  He  might  have  wan- 
dered this  way  by  chance.  I  should  have  put  him 
in  a  bag  and  carried  him  down  to  Valley  Swamp 
and  liberated  him. 

That  day,  while  my  neighbor  was  gone  with 
his  milk  wagon,  I  slipped  through  the  back  pas- 
ture and  hung  the  two  traps  up  on  their  nail  in 
the  can-house. 

I  went  anxiously  to  the  chicken-yard  the  next 
morning.  All  forty  came  out  to  be  counted.  It 
must  have  been  the  skunk,  I  was  thinking,  as  I 
went  on  into  the  brooding-house,  where  six  hens 
were  still  sitting. 

One  of  the  hens  was  off  her  nest  and  acting 
queerly.  Her  nest  was  empty !  Not  a  chick,  not 
a  bit  of  shell !  I  lifted  up  the  second  hen  in  the 
row,  and  of  her  thirteen  eggs,  only  three  were 
left.  The  hen  next  to  her  had  five  eggs;  the 
fourth  hen  had  four.  Forty  chickens  gone  (count- 


THE  SCARCITY   OF   SKUNKS      101 

ing  them  before  they  were  hatched),  all  in  one 
night. 

I  hitched  up  the  horse  and  drove  thoughtfully 
to  the  village,  where  I  bought  six  skunk-traps. 

"  Goin'  skunkin'  some,  this  spring,"  the  store 
man  remarked,  as  he  got  me  the  traps,  adding, 
"  Well,  they  's  some  on  'em.  I  've  seen  a  scaac'ty 
of  a  good  many  commodities,  but  I  never  yet  see 
a  scaac'ty  o'  skunks." 

I  did  n't  stop  to  discuss  the  matter,  being  a 
trifle  uncertain  just  then  as  to  my  own  mind,  but 
hurried  home  with  my  six  traps.  Six,  I  thought, 
would  do  to  begin  with,  though  I  really  had  no 
conception  of  the  number  of  cats  (or  skunks)  it 
had  taken  to  dispose  of  the  three  and  one  third 
dozens  of  eggs  (at  three  dollars  a  dozen!)  in  a 
single  night. 

Early  that  afternoon  I  covered  each  sitting  hen 
so  that  even  a  mouse  could  not  get  at  her,  and 
fixing  the  traps,  I  distributed  them  about  the 
brooding-house  floor;  then,  as  evening  came  on, 
I  pushed  a  shell  into  each  barrel  of  the  gun,  took 
a  comfortable  perch  upon  a  keg  in  the  corner  of 
the  house,  and  waited. 

I  had  come  to  stay.  Something  was  going  to 


102     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

happen.  And  something  did  happen,  away  on  in 
the  small  hours  of  the  morning,  namely  —  one 
little  skunk.  He  walked  into  a  trap  while  I  was 
dozing.  He  seemed  pretty  small  hunting  then, 
but  he  looms  larger  now,  for  I  have  learned  sev- 
eral more  things  about  skunks  than  I  knew  when 
I  had  the  talk  with  my  neighbor :  I  have  learned, 
for  one  thing,  that  forty  eggs,  soon  to  hatch,  are 
just  an  average  meal  for  the  average  half-grown 
skunk. 

The  catching  of  these  two  thieves  put  an  end 
to  the  depredations,  and  I  began  again  to  exhibit 
in  my  dreams,  when  one  night,  while  sound  asleep, 
I  heard  a  frightful  commotion  among  the  hens.  I 
did  the  hundred-yard  dash  to  the  chicken-house 
in  my  unforgotten  college  form,  but  just  in  time 
to  see  the  skunk  cross  the  moonlit  line  into  the 
black  woods  ahead  of  me. 

He  had  wrought  dreadful  havoc  among  the 
thoroughbreds.  What  devastation  a  skunk,  single- 
handed,  can  achieve  in  a  pen  of  young  chickens 
beggars  all  description. 

I  was  glad  that  it  was  dead  of  night,  that  the 
world  was  home  and  asleep  in  its  bed.  I  wanted 
no  sympathy.  I  wished  only  to  be  alone,  alone  in 


THE  SCARCITY   OF   SKUNKS      103 

the  cool,  the  calm,  the  quiet  of  this  serene  and 
beautiful  midnight.  Even  the  call  of  a  whippoor- 
will  in  the  adjoining  pasture  worried  me.  I  desired 
to  meditate,  yet  clear,  consecutive  thinking  seemed 
strangely  difficult.  I  felt  like  one  disturbed.  I  was 
out  of  harmony  with  this  peaceful  environment. 
Perhaps  I  had  hurried  too  hard,  or  I  was  too 
thinly  clothed,  or  perhaps  my  feet  were  cold  and 
wet.  I  only  know,  as  I  stooped  to  untwist  a  long 
and  briery  runner  from  about  my  ankle,  that  there 
was  great  confusion  in  my  mind,  and  in  my  spirit 
there  was  chaos.  I  felt  myself  going  to  pieces,  — 
I,  the  nature-lover!  Had  I  not  advocated  the 
raising  of  a  few  extra  hens  just  for  the  sake  of 
keeping  the  screaming  hawk  in  air  and  the  wild 
fox  astir  in  our  scanty  picnic  groves  ?  And  had  I 
not  said  as  much  for  the  skunk  *?  Why,  then,  at 
one  in  the  morning  should  I,  nor  clothed,  nor  in 
my  right  mind,  be  picking  my  barefoot  way 
among  the  tangled  dewberry  vines  behind  the 
barn,  swearing  by  the  tranquil  stars  to  blow  the 
white-striped  carcass  of  that  skunk  into  ten  mil- 
lion atoms  if  I  had  to  sit  up  all  the  next  night  to 
doit? 

One   o'clock  in  the  morning  was  the   fiend's 


104     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

hour.  There  could  be  no  unusual  risk  in  leaving 
the  farm  for  a  little  while  in  the  early  evening, 
merely  to  go  to  the  bean  supper  over  at  the 
chapel  at  the  Corner.  So  we  were  dressed  and 
ready  to  start,  when  I  spied  one  of  my  hens  out- 
side the  yard,  trying  to  get  in. 

Hurrying  down,  I  caught  her,  and  was  turn- 
ing back  to  the  barn,  when  I  heard  a  slow,  faint 
rustling  among  the  bushes  behind  the  hen-house. 
I  listened!  Something  was  moving  cautiously 
through  the  dead  leaves !  Tiptoeing  softly  around, 
I  surprised  a  large  skunk  making  his  way  slowly 
toward  the  hen-yard  fence. 

I  grabbed  a  stone  and  hurled  it,  jumping,  as  I 
let  it  drive,  for  another.  The  flying  missile  hit 
within  an  inch  of  the  creature's  nose,  hard  upon 
a  large  flat  rock  over  which  he  was  crawling.  The 
impact  was  stunning,  and  before  the  old  rascal 
could  get  to  his  groggy  feet,  I  had  fallen  upon 
him  —  literally  —  and  done  for  him. 

But  I  was  very  sorry.  I  hope  that  I  shall  never 
get  so  excited  as  to  fall  upon  another  skunk,  — 
never ! 

I  was  picking  myself  up,  when  I  caught  a  low 
cry  from  the  direction  of  the  house  —  half  scream, 


THE  SCARCITY  OF  SKUNKS      105 

half  shout.  It  was  a  woman's  voice,  the  voice  of 
my  wife,  I  thought.  Was  something  the  matter? 

"Hurry!"  I  heard.  But  how  could  I  hurry? 
My  breath  was  gone,  and  so  were  my  spectacles, 
and  other  more  important  things  besides,  while 
all  about  me  poured  a  choking  blinding  smother. 
I  fought  my  way  out. 

"  Oh,  hurry !  " 

I  was  on  the  jump;  I  was  already  rounding 
the  barn,  when  a  series  of  terrified  shrieks  issued 
from  the  front  of  the  house.  An  instant  more  and 
I  had  come.  But  none  too  soon,  for  there  stood 
the  dear  girl,  backed  into  a  corner  of  the  porch, 
her  dainty  robes  drawn  close  about  her,  and  a 
skunk,  a  wee  baby  of  a  skunk,  climbing  confi- 
dently up  the  steps  toward  her. 

"  Why  are  you  so  slow  !  "  she  gasped.  "  I  've 
been  yelling  here  for  an  hour !  —  Oh  !  do  —  don't 
kill  that  little  thing,  but  shoo  it  away,  quick ! " 

She  certainly  had  not  been  yelling  an  hour, 
nor  anything  like  it.  But  there  was  no  time  for 
argument  now,  and  as  for  shooing  little  skunks, 
I  was  past  that.  I  don't  know  exactly  what  I  did 
say,  though  I  am  positive  that  it  was  n't  "  shoo." 
I  was  clutching  a  great  stone,  that  I  had  run  with 


106     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

all  the  way  from  behind  the  hen-yard,  and  letting 
it  fly,  I  knocked  the  little  creature  into  a  harmless 
bunch  of  fur. 

The  family  went  over  to  the  bean  supper  and 
left  me  all  alone  on  the  farm.  But  I  was  calm 
now,  with  a  strange,  cold  calmness  born  of  ex- 
tremity. Nothing  more  could  happen  to  me ;  I 
was  beyond  further  harm.  So  I  took  up  the  bodies 
of  the  two  creatures,  and  carried  them,  together 
with  some  of  my  late  clothing,  over  beyond  the 
ridge  for  burial.  Then  I  returned  by  way  of  my 
neighbor's,  where  I  borrowed  two  sticks  of  blast- 
ing-powder and  a  big  cannon  fire-cracker.  I  had 
watched  my  neighbor  use  these  explosives  on  the 
stumps  in  a  new  piece  of  meadow.  The  next 
morning,  with  an  axe,  a  crowbar,  shovel,  gun, 
blasting-powder,  and  the  cannon-cracker,  I  started 
for  the  stump  in  the  wood-lot.  I  wished  the 
cannon-cracker  had  been  a  keg  of  powder.  I 
could  tamp  a  keg  of  powder  so  snugly  into  the 
hole  of  those  skunks ! 

It  was  a  beautiful  summer  morning,  tender 
with  the  half-light  of  breaking  dawn,  and  fresh 
with  dew.  Leaving  my  kit  at  the  mouth  of  the 
skunks'  den,  I  sat  down  on  the  stump  to  wait  a 


THE   SCARCITY   OF   SKUNKS      107 

moment,  for  the  loveliness  and  wonder  of  the 
opening  day  came  swift  upon  me.  From  the  top 
of  a  sapling,  close  by,  a  chewink  sent  his  simple, 
earnest  song  ringing  down  the  wooded  slope, 
and,  soft  as  an  echo,  floated  up  from  the  swampy 
tangle  of  wild  grape  and  azalea  the  pure  notes 
of  a  wood  thrush,  mellow  and  globed,  and  al- 
most fragrant  of  the  thicket  where  the  white 
honeysuckle  was  in  bloom.  Voices  never  heard 
at  other  hours  of  the  day  were  vocal  now ;  odors 
and  essences  that  vanish  with  the  dew  hung  faint 
in  the  air;  shapes  and  shadows  and  intimations 
of  things  that  slip  to  cover  from  the  common 
light,  stirred  close  about  me.  It  was  very  near  — 
the  gleam !  the  vision  splendid  !  How  close  to  a 
revelation  seems  every  dawn  !  And  this  early 
summer  dawn,  how  near  a  return  of  that 

time  when  meadow,  grove,  and  stream, 
The  earth  and  every  common  sight 
To  me  did  seem 
Apparelled  in  celestial  light. 

From  the  crest  of  my  ridge  I  looked  out  over 
the  treetops  far  away  to  the  Blue  Hills  still  slum- 
bering in  the  purple  west.  How  huge  and  prone 
they  lie  !  How  like  their  own  constant  azure  does 


108     THE   FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

the  spirit  of  rest  seem  to  wrap  them  round !  On 
their  distant  slopes  it  is  never  common  day,  never 
more  than  dawn,  for  the  shadows  always  sleep 
among  their  hollows,  and  a  haze  of  changing 
blues,  their  own  peculiar  beauty,  hangs,  even  at 
high  noon,  like  a  veil  upon  them,  shrouding  them 
with  largeness  and  mystery. 

A  rustle  in  the  dead  leaves  down  the  slope  re- 
called me.  I  reached  instinctively  for  the  gun, 
but  stayed  my  hand.  Slowly  nosing  his  way  up 
the  ridge,  came  a  full-grown  skunk,  his  tail  a-drag, 
his  head  swinging  close  to  the  ground.  He  was 
coming  home  to  the  den,  coming  leisurely,  con- 
tentedly, carelessly,  as  if  he  had  a  right  to  live. 
I  sat  very  still.  On  he  came,  scarcely  checking 
himself  as  he  winded  me.  How  like  the  dawn 
he  seemed !  —  the  black  of  night  with  the  white 
of  day  —  the  furtive  dawn  slipping  into  its  den ! 
He  sniffed  at  the  gun  and  cannon-cracker,  made 
his  way  over  them,  brushed  past  me,  and  calmly 
disappeared  beneath  the  stump. 

The  chewink  still  sang  from  the  top  of  the 
sapling,  but  the  tame  broad  day  had  come.  I 
stayed  a  little  while,  looking  off  still  at  the  dis- 
tant hills.  We  had  sat  thus,  my  six-year-old  and 


THE   SCARCITY   OF   SKUNKS      109 

I,  only  a  few  days  before,  looking  away  at  these 
same  hills,  when  the  little  fellow,  half  question- 
ingly,  half  pensively  asked,  "  Father,  how  can 
the  Blue  Hills  be  so  beautiful  and  have  rattle- 
snakes?" 

I  gathered  up  the  kit,  gun  and  cannon-cracker, 
and  started  back  toward  home,  turning  the  ques- 
tion of  hills  and  snakes  and  skunks  over  and  over 
as  I  went  along.  Over  and  over  the  question  still 
turns :  How  can  the  Blue  Hills  be  so  beautiful  ? 
The  case  of  my  small  wood-lot  is  easier :  beauti- 
ful it  must  ever  be,  but  its  native  spirit,  the  un- 
tamed spirit  of  the  original  wilderness,  the  free 
wild  spirit  of  the  primeval  forest,  shall  flee  it,  and 
vanish  forever,  with  this  last  den  of  the  skunks. 


V 
THE  NATURE-WRITER 


THE   NATURE-WRITER 

'welling  inland,  far  from  those  of 
us  who  go  down  to  the  sea  in 
manuscripts,  may  be  found  the 
reader,  no  doubt,  to  whom  the  title 
of  this  essay  is  not  anathema,  to 
whom  the  word  nature  still  means  the  real  out- 
doors, as  the  word  culture  may  still  mean  things 
other  than  "  sweetness  and  light."  It  is  different 
with  us.  We  shy  at  the  word  nature.  Good, 
honest  term,  it  has  suffered  a  sea-change  with  us; 
it  has  become  literary.  Piety  suffers  the  same 
change  when  it  becomes  professional.  There  has 
grown  up  about  nature  as  a  literary  term  a  vo- 
cabulary of  cant,  —  nature-lover,  nature-writer, 

nature Throw  the  stone  for  me,  you  who  are 

clean !  Inseparably  now  these  three  travel  to- 
gether, arm  in  arm,  like  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry 
—  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil.  Name  one, 
and  the  other  two  appear,  which  is  sad  enough 
for  the  nature-writer,  because  a  word  is  known 
by  the  company  it  keeps. 


ii4    THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

The  nature-writer  deserves,  maybe,  his  dubi- 
ous reputation;  he  is  more  or  less  of  a  fraud, 
perhaps.  And  perhaps  everybody  else  is,  more 
or  less.  I  am  sure  of  it  as  regards  preachers  and 
plumbers  and  politicians  and  men  who  work  by 
the  day.  Yet  I  have  known  a  few  honest  men  of 
each  of  these  several  sorts,  although  I  can't  recall 
just  now  the  honest  plumber.  I  have  known 
honest  nature-writers,  too ;  there  are  a  number  of 
them,  simple,  single-minded,  and  purposefully 
poor.  I  have  no  mind,  however,  thus  to  pro- 
nounce upon  them,  dividing  the  sheep  from  the 
goats,  lest  haply  I  count  myself  in  with  the 
wrong  fold.  My  desire,  rather,  is  to  see  what 
nature-writing,  pure  and  undefiled,  may  be,  and 
the  nature-writer,  what  manner  of  writer  he  ought 
to  be. 

For  it  is  plain  that  the  nature-writer  has  now 
evolved  into  a  distinct,  although  undescribed, 
literary  species.  His  origins  are  not  far  to  seek, 
the  course  of  his  development  not  hard  to  trace, 
but  very  unsatisfactory  is  the  attempt,  as  yet,  to 
classify  him.  We  all  know  a  nature-book  at  - 
sight,  no  matter  how  we  may  doubt  the  nature  ' 
in  it ;  we  all  know  that  the  writer  of  such  a  book 


THE    NATURE-WRITER        115 

must  be  a  nature-writer;  yet  this  is  not  describ- 
ing him  scientifically  by  any  means. 

Until  recent  years  the  nature-writer  had  been 
hardly  more  than  a  variant  of  some  long-estab- 
lished species  —  of  the  philosopher  in  Aristotle; 
of  the  moralizer  in  Theobaldus ;  of  the  scholar 
and  biographer  in  Walton;  of  the  traveler  in 
Josselyn ;  of  the  poet  in  Burns.  But  that  was  in 
the  feudal  past.  Since  then  the  land  of  letters  has 
been  redistributed ;  the  literary  field,  like  every 
other  field,  has  been  cut  into  intensified  and 
highly  specialized  patches  —  the  short  story  for 
you,  the  muck-rake  essay  for  me,  or  magazine 
verse,  or  wild  animal  biography.  The  paragraph 
of  outdoor  description  in  Scott  becomes  the 
modern  nature-sketch ;  the  "  Lines  to  a  Limping 
Hare  "  in  Burns  run  into  a  wild  animal  romance 
of  about  the  length  of  "The  Last  of  the  Mohi- 
cans " ;  the  occasional  letter  of  Gilbert  White's 
grows  into  an  annual  nature-volume,  this  year's 
being  entitled  "Buzz-Buzz  and  Old  Man  Bar- 
berry; or,  The  Thrilling  Young  Ladyhood  of  a 
Better-Class  Bluebottle  Fly."  The  story  that  fol- 
lows is  how  she  never  would  have  escaped  the 
net  of  Old  Man  Barberry  had  she  been  a  butter- 


n6     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

fly —  a  story  which  only  the  modern  nature- writ- 
ing specialist  would  be  capable  of  handling.  Na- 
ture-writing and  the  automobile  business  have 
developed  vastly  during  the  last  few  years. 

It  is  Charles  Kingsley,  I  think,  who  defines  "a 
thoroughly  good  naturalist"  as  one  "who  knows 
his  own  parish  thoroughly,"  a  definition,  all  ques- 
tions of  style  aside,  that  accurately  describes  the 
nature-writer.  He  has  field  enough  for  his  pen  in 
a  parish;  he  can  hardly  know  more  and  know 
it  intimately  enough  to  write  about  it.  For  the 
nature-writer,  while  he  may  be  more  or  less  of  a 
scientist,  is  never  mere  scientist — zoologist  or 
botanist.  Animals  are  not  his  theme ;  flowers  are 
not  his  theme.  Nothing  less  than  the  universe  is 
his  theme,  as  it  pivots  on  him,  around  the  distant 
boundaries  of  his  immediate  neighborhood. 

His  is  an  emotional,  not  an  intellectual,  point 
of  view;  a  literary,  not  a  scientific,  approach; 
which  means  that  he  is  the  axis  of  his  world, 
its  great  circumference,  rather  than  any  fact  — 
any  flower,  or  star,  or  tortoise.  Now  to  the 
scientist  the  tortoise  is  the  thing:  the  particu- 
lar species  Thalassochelys  kempi ;  of  the  family 
Testudinidse ;  of  the  order  Chelonia ;  of  the  class 


THE    NATURE-WRITER        u; 

Reptilia;  of  the  branch  Vertebrata.  But  the  na- 
ture-writer never  pauses  over  this  matter  to  capi- 
talize it.  His  tortoise  may  or  may  not  come 
tagged  with  this  string  of  distinguishing  titles. 
A  tortoise  is  a  tortoise  for  a'  that,  particularly  if 
it  should  happen  to  be  an  old  Sussex  tortoise 
which  has  been  kept  for  thirty  years  in  a  yard 
by  the  nature-writer's  friend,  and  which  "  On 
the  1st  November  began  to  dig  the  ground  in 
order  to  the  forming  of  its  hybernaculum,  which 
it  had  fixed  on  just  beside  a  great  tuft  of  hepa- 
ticas. 

"P.  S.  —  In  about  three  days  after  I  left  Sus- 
sex, the  tortoise  retired  into  the  ground  under 
the  hepatica." 

This  is  a  bit  of  nature-writing  by  Gilbert 
White,  of  Selborne,  which  sounds  quite  a  little 
like  science,  but  which  you  noticed  was  really 
spoiled  as  science  by  its  "tuft  of  hepaticas."  There 
is  no  buttonhole  in  science  for  the  nosegay.  And 
when,  since  the  Vertebrates  began,  did  a  scientific 
tortoise  ever  retire  ? 

One  more  quotation,  I  think,  will  make  clear 
my  point,  namely,  that  the  nature-writer  is  not 
detached  from  himself  and  alone  with  his  fact, 


n8     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

like  the  scientist,  but  is  forever  relating  his  tor- 
toise to  himself.  The  lines  just  quoted  were  from 
a  letter  dated  April  12,  1772.  Eight  years  after- 
wards, in  another  letter,  dated  Selborne,  April  21, 
1 780,  and  addressed  to  "  the  Hon.  Daines  Bar- 
rington,"  the  good  rector  writes  :  — 

"  Dear  Sir,  —  The  old  Sussex  tortoise,  that  I 
have  mentioned  to  you  so  often,  is  become  my 
property.  I  dug  it  out  of  its  winter  dormitory  in 
March  last,  when  it  was  enough  awakened  to  ex- 
press its  resentments  by  hissing,  and,  packing  it  in 
a  box  with  earth,  carried  it  eighty  miles  in  post- 
chaises.  The  rattle  and  hurry  of  the  journey  so 
perfectly  roused  it  that,  when  I  turned  it  out  on 
the  border,  it  walked  twice  down  to  the  bottom 
of  my  garden." 

Not  once,  not  three  times,  but  twice  down  to 
the  bottom  of  the  garden  !  We  do  not  question  it 
for  a  moment ;  we  simply  think  of  the  excellent 
thesis  material  wasted  here  in  making  a  mere 
popular  page  of  nature-writing.  Gilbert  White 
never  got  his  Ph.  D.,  if  I  remember,  because,  I 
suppose,  he  stopped  counting  after  the  tortoise 
made  its  second  trip,  and  because  he  kept  the 
creature  among  the  hepaticas  of  the  garden,  in- 


THE   NATURE-WRITER         119 

stead  of  on  a  shelf  in  a  bottle  of  alcohol.  Still,  let 
us  admit,  and  let  the  college  professors,  who  do 
research  work  upon  everything  except  their  stu- 
dents, admit,  that  walking  twice  to  the  bottom 
of  a  garden  is  not  a  very  important  discovery. 
But  how  profoundly  interesting  it  was  to  Gilbert 
White !  And  how  like  a  passage  from  the  Pen- 
tateuch his  record  of  it!  Ten  years  he  woos  this 
tortoise  (it  was  fourteen  that  Jacob  did  for  Ra- 
chel) and  wins  it  —  with  a  serene  and  solemn 
joy.  He  digs  it  out  of  its  winter  dormitory  (a 
hole  in  the  ground),  packs  it  carefully  in  a  box, 
carries  it  hurriedly,  anxiously,  by  post-chaises  for 
eighty  miles,  rousing  it  perfectly  by  the  end  of 
the  journey,  when,  liberating  it  in  the  rectory 
yard,  he  stands  back  to  see  what  it  will  do ;  and, 
lo !  it  walks  twice  to  the  bottom  of  the  garden  ! 

By  a  thoroughly  good  naturalist  Kingsley  may 
have  meant  a  thoroughly  good  nature-writer,  for 
I  think  he  had  in  mind  Gilbert  White,  who  cer- 
tainly was  a  thoroughly  good  naturalist,  and  who 
certainly  knew  his  own  parish  thoroughly.  In 
the  letters  from  which  I  have  quoted  the  gentle 
rector  was  writing  the  natural  history  of  Selborne, 
his  parish.  But  how  could  he  write  the  natural 


120     THE   FACE   OF  THE   FIELDS 

history  of  Selborne  when  his  tortoise  was  away 
over  in  Sussex ! 

A  tortoise  down  by  Sussex's  brim 
A  Sussex  tortoise  was  to  him, 
And  it  was  nothing  more  — 

nothing  at  all  for  the  "Natural  History  of  Sel- 
borne "  until  he  had  gone  after  it  and  brought  it 
home. 

Thus  all  nature-writers  do  with  all  their  nature 
in  some  manner  or  other,  not  necessarily  by  post- 
chaise  for  eighty  miles.  It  is  characteristic  of  the 
nature-writer,  however,  to  bring  home  his  out- 
doors, to  domesticate  his  nature,  to  relate  it  all  to 
himself.  His  is  a  dooryard  universe,  his  earth  a 
flat  little  planet  turning  about  a  hop-pole  in  his 
garden — a  planet  mapped  by  fields,  ponds,  and 
cow-paths,  and  set  in  a  circumfluent  sea  of  neigh- 
bor townships,  beyond  whose  shores  he  neither 
goes  to  church,  nor  works  out  his  taxes  on  the 
road,  nor  votes  appropriations  for  the  schools. 

He  is  limited  to  his  parish  because  he  writes 
about  only  so  much  of  the  world  as  he  lives  in, 
as  touches  him,  as  makes  for  him  his  home.  He 
may  wander  away,  like  Thoreau,  to  the  Maine 
woods,  or  down  along  the  far-off  shores  of  Cape 


THE   NATURE-WRITER         121 

Cod ;  but  his  best  writing  will  be  that  about  his 
hut  at  Walden. 

It  is  a  large  love  for  the  earth  as  a  dwelling- 
place,  a  large  faith  in  the  entire  reasonableness  of 
its  economy,  a  large  joy  in  all  its  manifold  life,  that 
moves  the  nature-writer.  He  finds  the  earth  most 
marvelously  good  to  live  in — himself  its  very 
dust ;  a  place  beautiful  beyond  his  imagination, 
and  interesting  past  his  power  to  realize  —  a  mys- 
tery every  way  he  turns.  He  comes  into  it  as  a 
settler  into  a  new  land,  to  clear  up  so  much  of 
the  wilderness  as  he  shall  need  for  a  home. 

Thoreau  perhaps,  of  all  our  nature-writers,  was 
the  wildest  wild  man,  the  least  domestic  in  his 
attitude.  He  went  off  far  into  the  woods,  a  mile 
and  a  half  from  Concord  village,  to  escape  do- 
mestication, to  seek  the  wild  in  nature  and  to  free 
the  wild  in  himself.  And  what  was  his  idea  of 
becoming  a  wild  man  but  to  build  a  cabin  and 
clear  up  a  piece  of  ground  for  a  bean-patch  !  He 
was  solid  Concord  beneath  his  war-paint — a  thin 
coat  of  savagery  smeared  on  to  scare  his  friends 
whenever  he  went  to  the  village  —  a  walk  which 
he  took  very  often.  He  differed  from  Gilbert 
White  as  his  cabin  at  Walden  differed  from  the 


122     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

quaint  old  cottage  at  Selbome.  But  cabin  and 
cottage  alike  were  to  dwell  in;  and  the  bachelor 
of  the  one  was  as  much  in  need  of  a  wife,  and  as 
much  in  love  with  the  earth,  as  the  bachelor  in 
the  other.  Thoreau's  "  Walden "  is  as  parochial 
and  as  domestic  with  its  woodchuck  and  beans  as 
White's  "Natural  History  of  Selborne  "  with  its 
tame  tortoise  and  garden. 

In  none  of  our  nature-writers,  however,  is  this 
love  for  the  earth  more  manifest  than  in  John 
Burroughs.  It  is  constant  and  dominant  in  him, 
an  expression  of  his  religion.  He  can  see  the  earth 
only  as  the  best  possible  place  to  live  in —  to  live 
with  rather  than  in  or  on ;  for  he  is  unlike  the 
rector  of  Selborne  and  the  wild-tame  man  of 
Walden  in  that  he  is  married  and  a  farmer  —  con- 
ditions, these,  to  deepen  one's  domesticity.  Show- 
ing somewhere  along  every  open  field  in  Bur- 
roughs's  books  is  a  piece  of  fence,  and  among  his 
trees  there  is  always  a  patch  of  gray  sloping  roof. 
He  grew  up  on  a  farm  (a  most  excellent  place 
to  grow  up  on),  became  a  clerk,  but  not  for  long, 
then  got  him  a  piece  of  land,  built  him  a  home 
out  of  unhewn  stone,  and  set  him  out  an  eighteen- 
acre  vineyard.  And  ever  since  he  has  lived  in  his 


THE    NATURE-WRITER         123 

vineyard,  with  the  Hudson  River  flowing  along 
one  side  of  it,  the  Catskills  standing  along  an- 
other side  of  it,  with  the  horizon  all  around,  and 
overhead  the  sky,  and  everywhere,  through  every- 
thing, the  pulse  of  life,  the  song  of  life,  the  sense 
of  home ! 

He  loves  the  earth,  for  the  earth  is  home. 

"I  would  gladly  chant  a  paean,"  he  exclaims, 
"for  the  world  as  I  find  it.  What  a  mighty  in- 
teresting place  to  live  in  !  If  I  had  my  life  to  live 
over  again,  and  had  my  choice  of  celestial  abodes, 
I  am  sure  I  should  take  this  planet,  and  I  should 
choose  these  men  and  women  for  my  friends  and 
companions.  This  great  rolling  sphere  with  its 
sky,  its  stars,  its  sunrises  and  sunsets,  and  with  its 
outlook  into  infinity  —  what  could  be  more  de- 
sirable? What  more  satisfying?  Garlanded  by 
the  seasons,  embosomed  in  sidereal  influences, 
thrilling  with  life,  with  a  heart  of  fire  and  a  gar- 
ment of  azure  seas  and  fruitful  continents  —  one 
might  ransack  the  heavens  in  vain  for  a  better  or 
a  more  picturesque  abode." 

A  full-throated  hymn,  this,  to  the  life  that  is, 
in  the  earth  that  is,  a  hymn  without  taint  of  cant, 
without  a  single  note  of  that  fevered  desire  for  a 


124     THE  FACE   OF  THE  FIELDS 

land  that  is  fairer  than  this,  whose  gates  are  of 
pearl  and  whose  streets  are  paved  with  gold.  If 
there  is  another  land,  may  it  be  as  fair  as  this ! 
And  a  pair  of  bars  will  be  gate  enough,  and 
gravel,  cinders,  grass,  even  March  mud,  will  do 
for  paving;  for  all  that  one  will  need  there,  as  all 
that  one  needs  here  —  here  in  New  England  in 
March — is  to  have  "  arctics  "  on  one's  feet  and  an 
equator  about  one's  heart.  The  desire  for  heaven 
is  natural  enough,  for  how  could  one  help  want- 
ing more  after  getting  through  with  this?  But  he 
sins  and  comes  short  of  the  glory  of  God  who 
would  be  quit  of  this  world  for  the  sake  of  a  bet- 
ter one.  There  is  n't  any  better  one.  This  one  is 
divine.  And  as  for  those  dreams  of  heaven  in  old 
books  and  monkish  hymns,  they  cannot  compare 
for  glory  and  for  downright  domestic  possibilities 
with  the  prospect  of  these  snow-clad  Hingham  hills 
from  my  window  this  brilliant  winter  morning. 

That  "this  world  is  not  my  resting-place" 
almost  any  family  man  can  believe  nowadays, 
but  that  "this  world  is  not  my  home"  I  can't 
believe  at  all.  However  poor  a  resting-place  we 
make  of  it,  however  certain  of  going  hence  upon 
a  "longe  journey,"  we  may  not  find  this  earth 


THE  NATURE-WRITER        125 

anything  else  than  home  without  confessing 
ourselves  tenants  here  by  preference,  and  liable, 
therefore,  to  pay  rent  throughout  eternity.  The 
best  possible  use  for  this  earth  is  to  make  a  home 
of  it,  and  for  this  span  of  life,  to  live  it  like  a 
human,  earth-born  being. 

Such  is  the  credo  of  the  nature-writer.  Not 
until  it  can  be  proved  to  him  that  eternal  day  is 
more  to  his  liking  than  the  sweet  alternation  of 
day  and  night,  that  unending  rest  is  less  monoto- 
nous than  his  round  of  labor  until  the  evening, 
that  streets  of  gold  are  softer  for  his  feet  than  dirt 
roads  with  borders  of  grass  and  dandelions,  that 
ceaseless  hallelujahs  about  a  throne  exalt  the  ex- 
cellency of  God  more  than  the  quiet  contempla- 
tion of  the  work  of  His  fingers  —  the  moon  and 
the  stars  which  He  has  ordained  —  not  until,  I 
say,  it  can  be  proved  to  him  that  God  did  not 
make  this  world,  or,  making  it,  spurned  it,  cursed 
it,  that  heaven  might  seem  the  more  blessed  — 
not  until  then  will  he  forego  his  bean-patch  at 
Walden,  his  vineyard  at  West  Park,  his  garden 
at  Selborne ;  will  he  deny  to  his  body  a  house- 
lot  on  this  little  planet,  and  the  range  of  this  timed 
and  tidy  universe  to  his  soul. 


126     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

As  between  himself  and  nature,  then,  the  thor- 
oughly good  nature-writer  is  in  love  —  a  purely 
personal  state;  lyric,  emotional,  rather  than  sci- 
entific, wherein  the  writer  is  not  so  much  con- 
cerned with  the  facts  of  nature  as  with  his  view 
of  them,  his  feelings  for  them,  as  they  environ 
and  interpret  him,  or  as  he  centres  and  interprets 
them. 

Were  this  all,  it  would  be  a  simple  story  of 
love.  Unfortunately,  nature-writing  has  become 
an  art,  which  means  some  one  looking  on,  and 
hence  it  means  self-consciousness  and  adaptation, 
the  writer  forced  to  play  the  difficult  part  of 
loving  his  theme  not  less,  but  loving  his  reader 
more. 

For  the  reader,  then,  his  test  of  the  nature-writer 
will  be  the  extreme  test  of  sincerity.  The  nature- 
writer  (and  the  poet)  more  than  many  writers  is 
limited  by  decree  to  his  experiences  —  not  to 
what  he  has  seen  or  heard  only,  but  as  strictly  to 
what  he  has  truly  felt.  All  writing  must  be  sin- 
cere. Is  it  that  nature-writing  and  poetry  must 
be  spontaneously  sincere  ?  Sincerity  is  the  first 
and  greatest  of  the  literary  commandments.  The 
second  is  like  unto  the  first.    Still  there  is  con- 


THE   NATURE-WRITER         127 

siderable  difference  between  the  inherent  market- 
ableness  of  a  cold  thought  and  a  warm,  purely 
personal  emotion.  One  has  a  right  to  sell  one's 
ideas,  to  barter  one's  literary  inventions ;  one  has 
a  right,  a  duty  it  may  be,  to  invent  inventions  for 
sale ;  but  one  may  not,  without  sure  damnation, 
make  "  copy  "  of  one's  emotions.  In  other  words, 
one  may  not  invent  emotions,  nor  observations 
either,  for  the  literary  trade.  The  sad  case  with 
much  of  our  nature-writing  is  that  it  has  become 
professional,  and  so  insincere,  not  answering  to 
genuine  observation  nor  to  genuine  emotion,  but 
to  the  bid  of  the  publisher. 

You  will  know  the  sincere  nature-writer  by  his 
fidelity  to  fact.  But,  alas  !  suppose  I  do  not  know 
the  fact?  To  be  sure.  And  the  nature-writer 
thought  of  that,  too,  and  penned  his  solemn, 
pious  preface,  wherein  he  declares  that  the  fol- 
lowing observations  are  exactly  as  he  personally 
saw  them ;  that  they  are  true  altogether ;  that  he 
has  the  affidavits  to  prove  it;  and  the  Indians 
and  the  Eskimos  to  swear  the  affidavits  prove  it. 
Of  course  you  are  bound  to  believe  after  that; 
but  you  wish  the  preface  did  not  make  it  so  un- 
necessarily hard. 


128     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

The  sincere  nature-writer,  because  he  knows 
he  cannot  prove  it,  and  that  you  cannot  prove  it, 
and  that  the  scientists  cannot  prove  it,  knows  that 
he  must  not  be  asked  for  proofs,  that  he  must  be 
above  suspicion,  and  so  he  sticks  to  the  truth  as 
the  wife  of  Caesar  to  her  spouse. 

Let  the  nature-writer  only  chronicle  his  observ- 
ations as  Dr.  C.  C.  Abbott  does  in  "  A  Natural- 
ist's Rambles  about  Home,"  or  let  him  dream  a 
dream  about  his  observations  as  Maeterlinck  does 
in  "  The  Life  of  the  Bee,"  yet  is  he  still  confined  to 
the  truth  as  a  hermit  crab  to  his  shell  —  a  hard, 
inelastic,  unchangeable,  indestructible  house  that 
he  cannot  adapt,  but  must  himself  be  adapted  to, 
or  else  abandon.  Chronicle  and  romance  alike  we 
want  true  to  fact.  But  this  particular  romance 
about  the  Bee  will  not  thus  qualify.  It  was  not 
written  for  beekeepers,  even  amateur  beekeepers, 
for  they  all  know  more  or  less  about  bees,  and 
hence  they  would  not  understand  the  book.  It 
was  written  for  those,  the  city-faring  folk,  like 
my  market-man,  who  asked  me  how  many  pounds 
of  honey  a  bee  would  gather  up  in  a  year,  and 
whether  I  kept  more  than  one  bee  in  a  hive.  A 
great  many  persons  must  have  read  "  The  Life 


THE   NATURE-WRITER        129 

of  the  Bee,"  but  only  one  of  them,  so  far  as  I 
know,  had  ever  kept  bees,  and  she  had  just  a 
single  swarm  in  between  the  wall  of  her  living- 
room  and  the  weather-boards  outside.  But  she 
had  listened  to  them  through  the  wall,  and  she 
sent  me  her  copy  of  "  The  Life,"  begging  me  to 
mark  on  the  margins  wherever  the  Bee  of  the 
book  was  unlike  her  bee  in  the  wall.  She  had 
detected  a  difference  in  the  buzz  of  the  two 
bees. 

Now  the  two  bees  ought  to  buzz  alike  —  one 
buzz,  distinct  and  always  distinguishable  from 
the  buzz  of  the  author.  In  the  best  nature-writ- 
ing the  author  is  more  than  his  matter,  but  he  is 
never  identical  with  it ;  and  not  until  we  know 
which  is  which,  and  that  the  matter  is  true,  have 
we  faith  in  the  author. 

I  knew  a  big  boy  once  who  had  almost  reached 
the  footprint  in  "  Robinson  Crusoe  "  (the  tragedy 
of  almost  reaching  it !)  when  some  one  blunder- 
ingly told  him  that  the  book  was  all  a  story, 
made  up,  not  true  at  all ;  no  such  island ;  no  such 
Crusoe !  The  boy  shut  up  the  book  and  put  it 
forever  from  him.  He  wanted  it  true.  He  had 
thought   it  true,   because   it  had  been   so   real. 


i3o     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

Robbed  of  its  reality,  he  was  unable  to  make  it 
true  again. 

Most  of  us  recover  from  this  shock  in  regard 
to  books,  asking  only  that  they  seem  real.  But 
we  are  eternally  childish,  curious,  credulous,  in 
our  thought  of  nature ;  she  is  so  close  and  real  to 
us,  and  yet  so  shadowy,  hidden,  mysterious,  and 
remote  !  We  are  eager  to  listen  to  any  tale,  will- 
ing to  believe  anything,  if  only  it  be  true.  Nay, 
we  are  willing  to  believe  it  true  —  we  were^  I 
should  say,  until,  like  the  boy  with  the  book,  we 
were  rudely  told  that  all  this  fine  writing  was 
made  up,  that  we  have  no  such  kindred  in  the 
wilds,  and  no  such  wilds.  Then  we  said  in  our 
haste,  all  men  —  who  write  nature-books  —  are 
liars. 

"  How  much  of  this  is  real  ?  "  asked  a  keen 
and  anxious  reader,  eyeing  me  narrowly,  as  she 
pointed  a  steady  finger  at  an  essay  of  mine  in  the 
"  Atlantic."  "  Have  you,  sir,  a  farm  and  four  real 
boys  of  your  own,  or  are  thty  faked  ?  " 

"  Good  heavens,  madam ! "  I  exclaimed.  "  Has 
it  come  to  this  ?  My  boys  faked  ! " 

But  it  shows  how  the  thoughtful  and  the  fear- 
ful regard  the  literary  naturalist,  and  how  para- 


THE   NATURE-WRITER        131 

mount  is  the  demand  for  honesty  in  the  matter 
of  mere  fact,  to  say  nothing  of  the  greater  matter 
of  expression. 

Only  yesterday,  in  a  review  in  the  "Nation" 
of  an  animal-man  book,  I  read  :  "  The  best  thing 
in  the  volume  is  the  description  of  a  fight  be- 
tween a  mink  and  a  raccoon  —  or  so  it  seems. 
Can  this  be  because  the  reader  does  not  know  the 
difference  between  a  mink  and  a  raccoon,  and 
does  know  the  difference  between  a  human  being 
and  the  story-teller's  manikin  ?  " 

This  is  the  wandering  wood,  this  Errour's  den, 

is  the  feeling  of  the  average  reader — of  even  the 
"Nation's"  book  reviewer  —  nowadays,  toward 
nature-writing,  a  state  of  mind  due  to  the  recent 
revelations  of  a  propensity  in  wild-animal  litera- 
ture to  stand  up  rather  than  to  go  on  all  fours. 

Whatever  of  the  Urim  and  of  the  Thummim 
you  put  into  your  style,  whatever  of  the  literary 
lights  and  the  perfections,  see  to  it  that  you  make 
the  facts  "after  their  pattern,  which  hath  been 
shewed  thee  in  the  mount." 

Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  witness  as  to  the 
facts. 


i32     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

Nor  is  this  all.  For  the  sad  case  with  much 
nature-writing,  as  I  have  said,  is  that  it  not  only- 
fails  to  answer  to  genuine  observation,  but  it  also 
fails  to  answer  to  genuine  emotion.  Often  as  we 
detect  the  unsound  natural  history,  we  much 
oftener  are  aware  of  the  unsound,  the  insincere, 
art  of  the  author. 

Now  the  facts  of  nature,  as  Mr.  Burroughs 
says,  are  the  material  of  nature  literature — of  one 
kind  of  such  literature,  let  me  add;  for,  while 
fabrications  can  be  made  only  into  lies,  there  may 
be  another  kind  of  good  nature-literature  com- 
pounded wholly  of  fancies.  Facts,  to  quote  Mr. 
Burroughs  again,  are  the  flora  upon  which  the 
nature-writer  lives.  "  I  can  do  nothing  without 
them."  Of  course  he  could  not.  But  Chaucer 
could.  Indeed,  Chaucer  could  do  nothing  with 
the  facts ;  he  had  to  have  fancies.  The  truth  in 
his  story  of  the  Cock  and  the  Fox  is  a  different 
kind  of  truth  from  the  truth  about  Burroughs's 
"Winter  Neighbors,"  yet  no  less  the  truth.  Good 
nature-writing  is  literature,  not  science,  and  the 
truth  we  demand  first  and  last  is  a  literary  truth 
—  the  fidelity  of  the  writer  to  himself.  He  may 
elect  to  use  facts  for  his  material ;  yet  they  are 


THE  NATURE-WRITER        133 

only  material,  and  no  better  as  material  than 
fancies.  For  it  is  not  matter  that  counts  last  in 
literature;  it  is  manner.  It  is  spirit  that  counts. 
It  is  the  man.  Only  honest  men  make  literature. 
Writers  may  differ  in  their  purpose,  as  Burroughs 
in  his  purpose  to  guide  you  through  the  woods 
differs  from  Chaucer's  purpose  to  entertain  you  by 
the  fire ;  but  they  are  one  in  their  spirit  of  honesty. 
Chaucer  pulls  a  long  face  and  begins  his  tale 
of  the  Cock  and  the  Fox  with  a  vivid  and  very 
realistic  description  of  a  widow's  cottage, 

B'syde  a  grove,  standing  in  a  dale, 

as  a  setting,  not  for  the  poor  widow  and  her  two 
daughters,  not  at  all ;  but  rather  to  stage  the  heroic 
comedy  between  Chauntecleer  and  his  favorite 
wife,  the  scarlet-eyed  Pertelote. 

It  is  just  before  daybreak.  They  are  not  up 
yet,  not  off  the  roost,  when  they  get  into  a  dis- 
cussion about  the  significance  of  dreams,  Chaun- 
tecleer having  had  a  very  bad  dream  during  the 
night.  The  dispute  waxes  as  it  spreads  out  over 
medicine,  philosophy,  theology,  and  psychology. 
Chauntecleer  quotes  the  classics,  cites  famous 
stories,  talks  Latin  to  her :  — 


134     THE   FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

For,  also  sicker  as  In  principio 
Mulier  est  hominis  confusio  ; 

translating  it  for  her  thus :  — 

Madam,  the  sentence  of  this  Latin  is  — 
Woman  is  mannes  joy  and  all  his  blis, 

while  she  tells  him  he  needs  a  pill  for  his  liver  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  he  wears  a  beard.  It  is  fine 
scorn,  but  passing  sad,  following  so  close  upon 
the  old  English  love  song  that  Chauntecleer  was 
wont  to  wake  up  singing. 

It  is  here,  at  this  critical  juncture  of  the  nature- 
story,  that  Chaucer  pauses  to  remark  seriously:  — 

For  thilke  tyme,  as  I  have  understonde, 
Bestes  and  briddes  coulde  speke  and  singe. 

Certainly  they  could ;  and  "  speking  and  singing 
in  thilke  tyme "  seems  much  more  natural  for 
"bestes  and  briddes"  than  many  of  the  things 
they  do  nowadays. 

Here,  again,  is  Izaak  Walton,  as  honest  a  man  as 
Chaucer  —  a  lover  of  nature,  a  writer  on  angling ; 
who  knew  little  about  angling,  and  less  about  na- 
ture ;  whose  facts  are  largely  fancies ;  but  —  what 
of  it*?  Walton  quotes,  as  a  probable  fact,  that 
pickerel  hatch  out  of  the  seeds  of  the  pickerel- 


THE   NATURE-WRITER         135 

weed ;  that  toads  are  born  of  fallen  leaves  on  the 
bottoms  of  ponds.  He  finds  himself  agreeing  with 
Pliny  "  that  many  flies  have  their  birth,  or  being, 
from  a  dew  that  in  the  spring  falls  upon  the  leaves 
of  the  trees";  and,  quoting  the  divine  du  Bartas, 
he  sings :  — 

So  slow  Bootes  underneath  him  sees 
In  th'  icy  isles  those  goslings  hatch'd  of  trees, 
Whose  fruitful  leaves,  falling  into  the  water, 
Are  turn'd,  they  say,  to  living  fowls  soon  after. 

But  the  "Compleat  Angler"  is  not  a  scientific 
work  on  fishes,  nor  a  handbook  on  angling  for 
anglers.  It  is  a  book  for  all  that  are  lovers  of 
literature;  for  "all  that  are  lovers  of  virtue;  and 
dare  trust  in  his  providence ;  and  be  quiet ;  and 
go  a  Angling." 

This  is  somewhat  unscientific,  according  to 
our  present  light ;  but,  wonderful  as  it  seemed 
to  Walton,  it  was  all  perfectly  natural  according 
to  his  light.  His  facts  are  faulty,  yet  they  are  the 
best  he  had.  So  was  his  love  the  best  he  had ; 
but  that  was  without  fault,  warm,  deep,  intense, 
sincere. 

Our  knowledge  of  nature  has  so  advanced  since 
Walton's  time,  and  our  attitude  has  so  changed, 


136     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

that  the  facts  of  nature  are  no  longer  enough  for 
literature.  We  know  all  that  our  writer  knows; 
we  have  seen  all  that  he  can  see.  He  can  no 
longer  surprise  us;  he  can  no  longer  instruct  us; 
he  can  no  longer  fool  us.  The  day  of  the  marvel- 
ous is  past;  the  day  of  the  cum  laude  cat  and  the 
magna  cum  laude  pup  is  past,  the  day  of  the  things 
that  I  alone  have  seen  is  past ;  and  the  day  of  the 
things  that  I,  in  common  with  you,  have  honestly 
felt,  is  come. 

There  should  be  no  suggestion  in  a  page  of 
nature-writing  that  the  author — penetrated  to  the 
heart  of  some  howling  summer  camp  for  his  raw 
material ;  that  he  ever  sat  on  his  roof  or  walked 
across  his  back  yard  in  order  to  write  a  book 
about  it.  But  nature-books,  like  other  books,  are 
gone  for  that  way — always  and  solely  for  the 
pot.  Such  books  are  "  copy  "  only  —  poor  copy 
at  that.  There  is  nothing  new  in  them ;  for  the 
only  thing  you  can  get  by  going  afar  for  it  is  a 
temptation  to  lie ;  and  no  matter  from  what  dis- 
tance you  fetch  a  falsehood  —  even  from  the  top 
of  the  world  —  you  cannot  disguise  the  true  com- 
plexion of  it.  Take  the  wings  of  the  morning 
and  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea,  and 


THE   NATURE-WRITER         137 

you  will  find  nothing  new  there  ;  ascend  into 
heaven  or  make  your  bed  in  hell  for  copy,  as  is 
the  fashion  nowadays  —  But  you  had  better  look 
after  your  parish,  and  go  faithfully  about  your 
chores;  and  if  you  have  a  garden  with  a  tortoise 
in  it,  and  you  love  them,  and  love  to  write  about 
them,  then  write. 

Nature-writing  must  grow  more  and  more  hu- 
man, personal,  interpretative.  If  I  go  into  the 
wilderness  and  write  a  book  about  it,  it  must  be 
plain  to  my  reader  that  "  the  writing  of  the  book 
was  only  a  second  and  finer  enjoyment  of  my 
holiday  in  the  woods."  If  my  chippy  sings,  it 
must  sing  a  chippy's  simple  song,  not  some  gloria 
that  only  "  the  careless  angels  know."  It  must 
not  do  any  extraordinary  thing  for  me ;  but  it 
may  lead  me  to  do  an  extraordinary  thing  —  to 
have  an  extraordinary  thought,  or  suggestion, 
or  emotion.  It  may  mean  extraordinary  things 
to  me ;  things  that  have  no  existence  in  nature, 
whose  beginnings  and  ends  are  in  me.  I  may 
never  claim  that  I,  because  of  exceptional  op- 
portunities, or  exceptional  insight,  or  exceptional 
powers  of  observation,  have  discovered  these  mar- 
velous things  here  in  the  wilds  of  Hingham.   My 


138     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

pages  may  be  anthropomorphic,  human ;  not, 
however,  because  I  humanize  my  bees  and  toads, 
but  because  I  am  human,  and  nature  is  meaning- 
ful ultimately  only  as  it  is  related  to  me.  I  must 
not  confuse  myself  with  nature ;  nor  yet  "  strug- 
gle against  fact  and  law  to  develop  and  keep" 
my  "  own  individuality."  I  must  not  anthropo- 
morphize nature ;  never  denature  nature ;  never 
follow  my  own  track  through  the  woods,  ima- 
gining that  I  am  on  the  trail  of  a  better-class 
wolf  or  a  two-legged  bear.  I  must  never  senti- 
mentalize over  nature  again  —  write  no  more 
about  "Buzz-Buzz  and  Old  Man  Barberry"; 
write  no  more  about  wailing  winds  and  weeping 
skies ;  for  mine  is  not  "  a  poet's  vision  dim,"  but 
an  open-eyed,  scientific  sight  of  things  as  they 
actually  are.  Once  I  have  seen  them,  gathered 
them,  if  then  they  turn  to  poetry,  let  them  turn. 
For  so  does  the  squash  turn  to  poetry  when  it 
is  brought  in  from  the  field.  It  turns  to  pie ;  it 
turns  to  poetry ;  and  it  still  remains  squash. 

Good  nature-literature,  like  all  good  literature, 
is  more  lived  than  written.  Its  immortal  part 
hath  elsewhere  than  the  ink-pot  its  beginning. 
The  soul  that  rises  with  it,  its  life's  star,   first 


THE   NATURE-WRITER         139 

went  down  behind  a  horizon  of  real  experience, 
then  rose  from  a  human  heart,  the  source  of  all 
true  feeling,  of  all  sincere  form.  Good  nature- 
writing  particularly  must  have  a  pre-literary  ex- 
istence as  lived  reality;  its  writing  must  be  only 
the  necessary  accident  of  its  being  lived  again  in 
thought.  It  will  be  something  very  human,  very 
natural,  warm,  quick,  irregular,  imperfect,  with 
the  imperfections  and  irregularities  of  life.  And 
the  nature-writer  will  be  very  human,  too,  and 
so  very  faulty;  but  he  will  have  no  lack  of  love 
for  nature,  and  no  lack  of  love  for  the  truth. 
Whatever  else  he  does,  he  will  never  touch  the 
flat,  disquieting  note  of  make-believe.  He  will 
never  invent,  never  pretend,  never  pose,  never 
shy.  He  will  be  honest  —  which  is  nothing  un- 
usual for  birds  and  rocks  and  stars ;  but  for  hu- 
man beings,  and  for  nature-writers  very  particu- 
larly, it  is  a  state  less  common,  perhaps,  than  it 
ought  to  be. 


VI 
JOHN  BURROUGHS 


JOHN  BURROUGHS 

ohn  Burroughs  began  his  literary 
career  (and  may  he  so  end  it!) 
by  writing  an  essay  for  the  "At- 
lantic Monthly,"  as  good  an  intro- 
duction (and  conclusion),  speak- 
ing by  the  rhetoric,  as  a  lifelong  composition 
need  have.  That  first  essay  entitled  "  Expression," 
"  a  somewhat  Emersonian  Expression,"  says  its 
author,  was  printed  in  the  "Atlantic"  for  Novem- 
ber, i860,  which  was  fifty  years  ago.  Fifty  years 
are  not  threescore  and  ten ;  many  men  have  lived 
past  threescore  and  ten,  but  not  many  men  have 
written  continuously  for  the  "  Atlantic  "  for  fifty 
years  with  eye  undimmed  and  natural  force  un- 
abated. Mr.  Burroughs's  eye  for  the  truth  of  na- 
ture has  grown  clearer  during  these  fifty  years, 
and  the  vigor  of  his  youth  has  steadied  into  a 
maturity  of  strength  which  in  some  of  his  latest 
essays  —  "  The  Long  Road,"  for  instance  —  lifts 
one  and  bears  one  down  the  unmeasured  reaches 
of  geologic  time,  compassing  the  timelessness  of 


i44    THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

time,  its  beginninglessness,  its  endinglessness,  as 
none  of  his  earlier  chapters  have  done. 

Many  men  have  written  more  than  Mr.  Bur- 
roughs. His  eighteen  or  twenty  books,  as  books 
may  be  turned  out,  are  nothing  remarkable  for 
fifty  years  of  work.  It  is  not  their  numbers,  but 
the  books,  that  are  remarkable,  that  among  them 
should  be  found  "  Wake-Robin,"  "  Winter  Sun- 
shine," "  Birds  and  Poets,"  "  Locusts  and  Wild 
Honey,"  "  Pepacton,"  "  Fresh  Fields,"  "  Signs  and 
Seasons,"  "  Riverby,"  "  Far  and  Near,"  "  Ways 
of  Nature,"  and  "  Leaf  and  Tendril " ;  for  these 
eleven  nature-books,  as  a  group,  stand  alone  and 
at  the  head  of  the  long  list  of  books  written 
about  the  out-of-doors  since  the  days  of  the  His- 
toria  Animalium,  and  the  mediaeval  "Fables"  and 
"  Beasteries." 

These  eleven  volumes  are  Mr.  Burroughs's 
characteristic,  his  important  work.  His  other 
books  are  eminently  worth  while :  there  is  rever- 
ent, honest  thinking  in  his  religious  essays,  a 
creedless  but  an  absolute  and  joyous  faith;  there 
is  simple  and  exquisite  feeling  in  his  poems ;  close 
analysis  and  an  unmitigatedness,  wholly  Whit- 
manesque,  in  his  interpretation  of  Whitman ;  and 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  145 

no  saner,  happier  criticism  anywhere  than  in  his 
"Literary  Values."  There  are  many  other  excellent 
critics,  however,  many  poets  and  religious  writers, 
many  other  excellent  nature-writers,  too;  but  is 
there  any  other  who  has  written  so  much  upon 
the  ways  of  nature  as  they  parallel  and  cross  the 
ways  of  men,  upon  so  great  a  variety  of  nature's 
forms  and  expressions,  and  done  it  with  such 
abiding  love,  with  such  truth  and  charm  ? 

Yet  such  a  comparison  is  beyond  proof,  ex- 
cept in  the  least  of  the  literary  values  — mere 
quantity;  and  it  may  be  with  literature  as  with 
merchandise :  the  larger  the  cask  the  greater  the 
tare.  Charm?  Is  not  charm  that  which  /chance 
to  like,  ox  you  chance  to  like  ?  Others  have  writ- 
ten of  nature  with  as  much  love  and  truth  as  has 
Mr.  Burroughs,  and  each  with  his  own  peculiar 
charm :  Audubon,  with  the  spell  of  wild  places 
and  the  thrill  of  fresh  wonder;  Traheme,  with 
the  ecstasy  of  the  religious  mystic;  Gilbert  White, 
with  the  sweetness  of  the  evening  and  the  morn- 
ing; Thoreau,  with  the  heat  of  noonday;  Jef- 
feries,  with  just  a  touch  of  twilight  shadowing 
all  his  pages.  We  want  them  severally  as  they 
are ;  Mr.  Burroughs  as  he  is,  neither  wandering 


146    THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

"  lonely  as  a  cloud  "  in  search  of  poems,  nor  skulk- 
ing in  the  sedges  along  the  banks  of  the  Guaso 
Nyero  looking  for  lions.  We  want  him  at  Slab- 
sides,  near  his  celery  fields.  And  whatever  the 
literary  quality  of  our  other  nature-writers,  no 
one  of  them  has  come  any  nearer  than  Mr.  Bur- 
roughs to  that  difficult  ideal,  —  a  union  of  thought 
and  form,  no  more  to  be  separated  than  the  heart 
and  the  bark  of  a  live  tree. 

Take  Mr.  Burroughs's  work  as  a  whole,  and  it 
is  beyond  dispute  the  most  complete,  the  most  re- 
vealing, of  all  our  outdoor  literature.  His  pages 
lie  open  like  the  surface  of  a  pond,  sensitive  to 
every  wind,  or  calm  as  the  sky,  holding  the 
clouds  and  the  distant  blue,  and  the  dragon-fly, 
stiff-winged  and  pinned  to  the  golden  knob  of  a 
spatter-dock. 

All  outdoor  existence,  all  outdoor  phenomena, 
are  deeply  interesting  to  him.  There  is  scarcely  a 
form  of  outdoor  life,  scarcely  a  piece  of  land- 
scape, or  natural  occurrence  characteristic  of  the 
Eastern  States,  which  has  not  been  dealt  with 
suggestively  in  his  pages :  the  rabbit  under  his 
porch,  the  paleozoic  pebble  along  his  path,  the 
salt   breeze  borne   inland  by  the  Hudson,  the 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  ,47 

whirl  of  a  snowstorm,  the  work  of  the  hom  y- 
bees,  the  procession  of  the  seasons  over  Slabsides, 
even  the  abundant  soil  out  of  which  he  and  his 
grapes  grow  and  which,  "  incorruptible  and  uncle- 
filed,"  he  calls  divine. 

He  devotes  an  entire  chapter  to  the  bluebird, 
a  chapter  to  the  fox,  one  to  the  apple,  another  to 
the  wild  strawberry.  The  individual,  the  particu- 
lar thing,  is  always  of  particular  interest  to  him. 
But  so  is  its  habitat,  the  whole  of  its  environment. 
He  sees  the  gem,  not  cut  and  set  in  a  ring,  but 
rough  in  the  mine,  where  it  glitters  on  the  hand 
of  nature,  and  glitters  all  the  more  that  it  is  worn 
in  the  dark.  Naturally  Mr.  Burroughs  has  writ- 
ten much  about  the  birds ;  yet  he  is  not  an  or- 
nithologist. His  theme  has  not  been  this  or  that, 
but  nature  in  its  totality,  as  it  is  held  within  the 
circle  of  his  horizon,  as  it  surrounds,  supports,  and 
quickens  him. 

That  nature  does  support  and  quicken  the 
spiritual  of  him,  no  less  than  the  physical,  is  the 
inspiration  of  his  writing  and  the  final  comment 
it  requires.  Whether  the  universe  was  shaped 
from  chaos  with  man  as  its  end,  is  a  question  of 
real  concern  to  Mr.  Burroughs,  but  of  less  con- 


148     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

cern  to  him  than  the  problem  of  shaping  himself 
to  the  universe,  of  living  as  long  as  he  can  upon 
a  world  so  perfectly  adapted  to  life,  if  only  one 
be  physically  and  spiritually  adaptable.  To  take 
the  earth  as  one  finds  it,  to  plant  one's  self  in  it, 
to  plant  one's  roof-tree  in  it,  to  till  it,  to  under- 
stand it  and  the  laws  which  govern  it,  and  the 
Perfection  which  created  it,  and  to  love  it  all, — 
this  is  the  heart  of  Mr.  Burroughs's  religion,  the 
pith  of  his  philosophy,  the  conclusion  of  his 
books. 

But  if  a  perfect  place  for  the  fit,  how  hard  a 
place  is  this  world  for  the  lazy,  the  ignorant,  the 
stubborn,  the  weak,  the  physically  and  spiritually 
ill !  So  hard  that  a  torpid  liver  is  almost  a  mortal 
handicap,  the  stars  in  their  courses  fighting  against 
the  bilious  to  defeat  them,  to  drive  them  to  take 
exercise,  to  a  copious  drinking  of  water,  to  a 
knowledge  of  burdock  and  calomel  —  to  obedi- 
ence and  understanding. 

Underlying  all  of  Mr.  Burroughs's  thought  and 
feeling,  framing  every  one  of  his  books,  is  a  deep 
sense  of  the  perfection  of  nature,  the  sharing  of 
which  is  physical  life,  the  understanding  of  which 
is  spiritual  life,  is  knowledge  of  God  himself, 


JOHN   BURROUGHS  149 

in  some  part  of  His  perfection.  "  I  cannot  tell 
what  the  simple  apparition  of  the  earth  and  sky 
mean  to  me ;  I  think  that  at  rare  intervals  one 
sees  that  they  have  an  immense  spiritual  mean- 
ing, altogether  unspeakable,  and  that  they  are  the 
great  helps,  after  all."  How  the  world  was  made 
—  its  geology,  its  biology — is  the  great  ques- 
tion, for  its  answer  is  poetry  and  religion  and 
life  itself.  Mr.  Burroughs  is  serenely  sure  as  to 
who  made  the  world ;  the  theological  speculation 
as  to  why  it  was  made,  he  answers  by  growing 
small  fruits  on  it,  living  upon  it,  writing  about  it. 
Temperamentally  Mr.  Burroughs  is  an  opti- 
mist, as  vocationally  he  is  a  writer,  and  avoca- 
tionally  a  vine-dresser.  He  plants  and  expects 
to  gather  —  grapes  from  his  grape-vines,  books 
from  his  book-vines,  years,  satisfactions,  sorrows, 
joys,  all  that  is  due  him. 

The  waters  know  their  own  and  draw 

The  brook  that  springs  in  yonder  heights  ; 

So  flows  the  good  with  equal  law 
Unto  the  soul  of  pure  delights. 

And  what  is  it  that  is  due  him?  Everything; 
everything  essential;  as  everything  essential  is 
due  the  pine  tree,  the  prairie,  the  very  planet.   Is 


i5o     THE  FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

not  this  earth  a  star  %  Are  not  the  prairie,  the  pine 
tree,  and  man  the  dust  of  stars'?  each  a  part  of  the 
other?  all  parts  of  one  whole  —  a  universe,  round, 
rolling,  without  beginning,  without  end,  without 
flaw,  without  lack,  a  universe  self-sustained,  per- 
fect ? 

I  stay  my  haste,  I  make  delays, 

For  what  avails  this  eager  pace  ? 
I  stand  amid  the  eternal  ways, 

And  what  is  mine  shall  know  my  face. 

Mr.  Burroughs  came  naturally  by  such  a  view 
of  nature  and  its  consequent  optimism.  It  is  due 
partly  to  his  having  been  born  and  brought 
up  on  a  farm  where  he  had  what  was  due  him 
from  the  start.  Such  birth  and  bringing-up  is  the 
natural  right  of  every  boy.  To  know  and  to  do 
the  primitive,  the  elemental ;  to  go  barefoot,  to 
drive  the  cows,  to  fish,  and  to  go  to  school  with 
not  too  many  books  but  with  "plenty  of  real 
things"  —  these  are   nominated  in  every  boy's 

bond. 

Serene,  I  fold  my  hands  and  wait, 

is  the  poem  of  a  childhood  on  the  farm,  and  the 
poem  of  a  manhood  on  the  farm,  in  spite  of  the 
critic  who  says :  — 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  151 

"We  have  never  ceased  to  wonder  that  this 
friend  of  the  birds,  this  kindly  interpreter  of  na- 
ture in  all  her  moods,  was  born  and  brought  up 
on  a  farm ;  it  was  in  that  smiling  country  watered 
by  the  east  branch  of  the  Delaware.  No  man, 
as  a  rule,  knows  less  about  the  colors,  songs,  and 
habits  of  birds,  and  is  more  indifferent  to  natural 
scenery  than  the  man  born  to  the  soil,  who  delves 
in  it  and  breathes  its  odors.  Contact  with  it  and 
laborious  days  seem  to  deaden  his  faculties  of  ob- 
servation and  deprive  him  of  all  sympathy  with 
nature."  During  the  days  when  the  deadening 
might  have  occurred,  Mr.  Burroughs  was  teaching 
school.  Then  he  became  a  United  States  bank 
examiner,  and  only  after  that  returned  to  the 
country  where  he  still  lives.  He  is  now  in  his 
seventies,  and  coming  full  of  years,  and  fuller 
and  fuller  of  books,  as  his  vines  are  full  of  years, 
and  fuller  and  fuller  of  grapes. 

Could  it  be  otherwise  ?  If  men  and  grapes 
are  of  the  same  divine  dust,  should  they  not 
grow  according  to  the  same  divine  laws?  Here 
in  the  vineyard  along  the  Hudson,  Mr.  Bur- 
roughs planted  himself  in  planting  his  vines,  and 
every  trellis  that  he  set  has  become  his  own  sup- 


i52     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

port  and  stay.  The  very  clearing  of  the  land  for 
his  vineyard  was  a  preparation  of  himself  physi- 
cally and  morally  for  a  more  fruitful  life. 

"  Before  the  snow  was  off  in  March,"  he  says  in 
"  Literary  Values,"  "  we  set  to  work  under-drain- 
ing the  moist  and  springy  places.  My  health  and 
spirits  improved  daily.  I  seemed  to  be  under- 
draining  my  own  life  and  carrying  off  the  stag- 
nant water,  as  well  as  that  of  the  land."  And  so 
he  was.  There  are  other  means  of  doing  it  —  tak- 
ing drugs,  playing  golf,  walking  the  streets ;  but 
surely  the  advantages  and  the  poetry  are  all  in 
favor  of  the  vineyard.  And  how  much  fitter  a 
place  the  vineyard  to  mellow  and  ripen  life,  than 
a  city  roof  of  tarry  pebbles  and  tin ! 

Though  necessarily  personal  and  subjective, 
Mr.  Burroughs's  writing  is  entirely  free  from  self- 
exploitation  and  confession.  There  are  pages  scat- 
tered here  and  there  dealing  briefly  and  frankly 
with  his  own  natural  history,  but  our  thanks  are 
due  to  Mr.  Burroughs  that  he  never  made  a  busi- 
ness of  watching  himself.  Once  he  was  inveigled 
by  a  magazine  editor  into  doing  "  An  Egotisti- 
cal Chapter,"  wherein  we  find  him  as  a  boy  of 
sixteen  reading  essays,  and  capable  at  that  age 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  153 

of  feeding  for  a  whole  year  upon  Dr.  Johnson ! 
Then  we  find  him  reading  Whipple's  essays,  and 
the  early  outdoor  papers  of  Higginson ;  and 
later,  at  twenty-three,  settling  down  with  Emer- 
son's essays,  and  getting  one  of  his  own  into  the 
"  Atlantic  Monthly." 

How  early  his  own  began  to  come  to  him ! 

That  first  essay  in  the  "Atlantic"  was  followed 
by  a  number  of  outdoor  sketches  in  the  New 
York  "  Leader "  —  written,  Mr.  Burroughs  says, 
"  mainly  to  break  the  spell  of  Emerson's  influ- 
ence and  get  upon  ground  of  my  own."  He 
succeeded  in  both  purposes;  and  a  large  and 
exceedingly  fertile  piece  of  ground  it  proved  to 
be,  too,  this  which  he  got  upon  !  Already  the 
young  writer  had  chosen  his  field  and  his  crop. 
The  out-of-doors  has  been  largely  his  literary 
material,  as  the  essay  has  been  largely  his  liter- 
ary form,  ever  since.  He  has  done  other  things 
—  volumes  of  literary  studies  and  criticisms; 
but  his  theme  from  first  to  last  has  been  the 
Great  Book  of  Nature,  a  page  of  which,  here 
and  there,  he  has  tried  to  read  to  us. 

Mr.  Burroughs's  work,  in  outdoor  literature, 
is  a  distinct  species,  with  new  and  well-marked 


i54     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

characteristics.  He  is  the  nature-writer,  to  be  dis- 
tinguished from  the  naturalist  in  Gilbert  White, 
the  mystic  in  Traherne,  the  philosopher  in  Emer- 
son, the  preacher,  poet,  egotist  in  Thoreau,  the 
humorist  in  Charles  Dudley  Warner.  As  we  now 
know  the  nature-writer  we  come  upon  him  for 
the  first  time  in  Mr.  Burroughs.  Such  credit 
might  have  gone  to  Thomas  Wentworth  Hig- 
ginson,  had  he  not  been  something  else  before 
he  was  a  lover  of  nature — of  letters  first,  then 
of  flowers,  carrying  his  library  into  the  fields; 
whereas  Mr.  Burroughs  brings  the  fields  into  the 
library.  The  essay  whose  matter  is  nature,  whose 
moral  is  human,  whose  manner  is  strictly  literary, 
belongs  to  Mr.  Burroughs.  His  work  is  distin- 
guished by  this  threefold  and  even  emphasis.  In 
almost  every  other  of  our  early  outdoor  writers 
either  the  naturalist  or  the  moralist  or  the  stylist 
holds  the  pen. 

Early  or  late,  this  or  that,  good  outdoor  writ- 
ing must  be  marked,  first,  by  fidelity  to  fact;  and, 
secondly,  by  sincerity  of  expression.  Like  quali- 
ties mark  all  good  literature ;  but  they  are  them- 
selves the  very  literature  of  nature.  When  we 
take  up  a  nature-book  we  ask  (and  it  was  Mr. 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  ,55 

Burroughs  who  taught  us  to  ask),  "  Is  the  record 
true?  Is  the  writing  honest?" 

In  these  eleven  volumes  by  Mr.  Burroughs 
there  are  many  observations,  and  it  is  more  than 
likely  that  some  of  them  may  be  wrong,  but  it 
is  not  possible  that  any  of  them  could  be  mixed 
with  observations  that  Mr.  Burroughs  knows 
he  never  made.  If  Mr.  Burroughs  has  written  a 
line  of  sham  natural  history,  which  line  is  it?  In 
a  preface  to  "Wake-Robin,"  the  author  says  his 
readers  have  sometimes  complained  that  they  do 
not  see  the  things  which  he  sees  in  the  woods ;  but 
I  doubt  if  there  ever  was  a  reader  who  suspected 
Mr.  Burroughs  of  not  seeing  the  things. 

His  reply  to  these  complaints  is  significant, 
being  in  no  manner  a  defense,  but  an  exquisite 
explanation,  instead,  of  the  difference  between  the 
nature  which  anybody  may  see  in  the  woods  and 
the  nature  that  every  individual  writer,  because  he 
is  a  writer,  and  an  individual,  must  put  into  his 
book :  a  difference  like  that  between  the  sweet- 
water  gathered  by  the  bee  from  the  flowers  and 
the  drop  of  acid-stung  honey  deposited  by  the 
bee  in  the  comb.  The  sweet-water  undergoes  a 
chemical  change  in  being  brought  to  the  hive,  as 


156     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

the  wild  nature  undergoes  a  literary  change  — 
by  the  addition  of  the  writer's  self  to  the  nature, 
while  with  the  sweet-water  it  is  by  the  addition 
of  the  bee. 

One  must  be  able  to  walk  to  an  editorial  office 
and  back,  and  all  the  way  walk  humbly  with  his 
theme,  as  Mr.  Burroughs  ever  does — not  en- 
tirely forgetful  of  himself,  nor  of  me  (because  he 
has  invited  me  along) ;  but  I  must  be  quiet  and 
not  disturb  the  fishing  —  if  we  go  by  way  of  a 
trout-stream. 

True  to  the  facts,  Mr.  Burroughs  is  a  great  deal 
more  than  scientific,  for  he  loves  the  things  —  the 
birds,  hills,  seasons — as  well  as  the  truths  about 
them;  and  true  to  himself,  he  is  not  by  any  means 
a  simple  countryman  who  has  never  seen  the  city, 
a  natural  idyl,  who  lisps  in  "  Atlantic  "  essays,  be- 
cause the  essays  come.  He  is  fully  aware  of  the 
thing  he  wants  to  do,  and  by  his  own  confession 
has  a  due  amount  of  trouble  shaping  his  raw 
material  into  finished  literary  form.  He  is  quite 
in  another  class  from  the  authors  of  "  The  Com- 
plete Angler"  and  "New  England's  Rarities 
Discovered."  In  Isaak  Walton,  to  quote  Leslie 
Stephen,  "<z  happy  combination  of  circumstances  has 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  i57 

provided  us  with  a  true  country  idyl,  fresh  and 
racy  from  the  soil,  not  consciously  constructed  by 
the  most  skillful  artistic  hand." 

Now  the  skillful  artistic  hand  is  everywhere 
seen  in  Mr.  Burroughs.  What  writer  in  these 
days  could  expect  happy  combinations  of  cir- 
cumstances in  sufficient  numbers  for  eleven  vol- 
umes? Albeit  a  stone  house,  in  a  vineyard  by 
the  Hudson,  seems  a  very  happy  combination, 
indeed ! 

But  being  an  idyl,  when  you  come  to  think 
of  it,  is  not  the  result  of  a  happy  combination  of 
circumstances,  but  rather  of  stars  —  of  horoscope. 
You  are  born  an  idyl  or  you  are  not,  and  where 
and  when  you  live  has  nothing  to  do  with  it. 

Who  would  look  for  a  true  country  idyl  to- 
day in  the  city  of  Philadelphia?  Yet  one  came 
out  of  there  yesterday,  and  lies  here  open  before 
me,  on  the  table.  It  is  a  slender  volume,  called 
"  With  the  Birds,  An  Affectionate  Study,"  by 
Caroline  Eliza  Hyde.  The  author  is  discussing  the 
general  subject  of  nomenclature  and  animal  dis- 
tribution, and  says :  — 

"When  the  Deluge  covered  the  then  known 
face  of  the   earth,  the   birds  were  drowned  with 


158     THE   FACE   OF  THE   FIELDS 

every  other  living  thing,  except  those  that  Noah, 
commanded  by  God,  took  two  by  two  into  the 
Ark. 

"When  I  reflect  deeply  and  earnestly  about 
the  Ark,  as  every  one  should,  thoughts  crowd  my 
mind  with  an  irresistible  force." 

[And  they  crowd  my  mind,  too.] 

"  Noah  and  his  family  had  preserved  the  names 
of  the  birds  given  them  by  Adam.  This  is  as- 
sured, for  Noah  sent  a  raven  and  a  dove  out  to 
see  if  the  waters  had  abated,  and  we  have  birds  of 
that  name  now.  Nothing  was  known  of  our  part 
of  the  globe,  so  these  birds  must  have  remained 
in  the  Holy  Land  for  centuries.  We  do  not  hear 
of  them  until  America  was  discovered.  .  .  . 

"Bats  come  from  Sur.  They  are  very  black 
mouse-like  birds,  and  disagreeable.  .  .  .  The  bobo- 
link is  not  mentioned  in  the  Bible,  but  it  is  doubt- 
less a  primitive  bird.  The  cock  that  crows  too 
early  in  the  morning  .  .  .  can  hardly  be  classed 
with  the  song-birds.  The  name  of  the  humming- 
bird is  not  mentioned  in  the  Bible,  but  as  there 
is  nothing  new  under  the  sun,  he  is  probably  a 
primitive  bird." 

Mr.  Burroughs  will  agree  that  the  humming- 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  159 

bird  is  probably  a  primitive  bird;  and  also  that 
this  is  a  true  idyl,  and  that  he  could  not  write  a 
true  idyl  if  he  tried.  No  one  could  write  like  that 
by  trying.  And  what  has  any  happy  combination 
of  circumstances  to  do  with  it?  No,  a  book  es- 
sentially is  only  a  personality  in  type,  and  he  who 
would  not  be  frustrated  of  his  hope  to  write  a 
true  idyl  must  himself  be  born  a  true  idyl.  A 
fine  Miltonic  saying ! 

Mr.  Burroughs  is  not  an  idyl,  but  an  essayist, 
with  a  love  for  books  only  second  to  his  love  for 
nature ;  a  watcher  in  the  woods,  a  tiller  of  the  soil, 
a  reader,  critic,  thinker,  poet,  whose  chief  busi- 
ness these  fifty  years  has  been  the  interpretation 
of  the  out-of-doors. 

Upon  him  as  interpreter  and  observer,  his  re- 
cent books,  "  Ways  of  Nature  "  and  "  Leaf  and 
Tendril,"  are  an  interesting  comment. 

Truth  does  not  always  make  good  literature, 
not  when  it  is  stranger  than  fiction,  as  it  often  is, 
and  the  writer  who  sticks  to  the  truth  of  nature 
must  sometimes  do  it  at  the  cost  of  purely  liter- 
ary ends.  Have  I  sacrificed  truth  to  literature? 
asks  Mr.  Burroughs  of  his  books.  Have  I  seen 
in  nature  the  things  that  are  there,  or  the  strange 


160    THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

man-things,  the  "winged  creeping  things  which 
have  four  feet,"  and  which  were  an  abomination 
to  the  ancient  Hebrews,  but  which  the  readers 
of  modern  nature-writing  do  greedily  devour  — 
are  these  the  things  I  have  seen  ?  And  for  an 
answer  he  sets  about  a  reexamination  of  all  he 
has  written,  from  "  Wake-Robin "  to  "  Far  and 
Near,"  hoping  "  that  the  result  of  the  discussion 
or  threshing  will  not  be  to  make  the  reader  love 
the  animals  less,  but  rather  to  love  the  truth 
more." 

But  the  result,  as  embodied  in  "  Ways  of  Na- 
ture" and  in  "Leaf  and  Tendril,"  is  quite  the 
opposite,  I  fear;  for  these  two  volumes  are  more 
scientific  in  tone  than  any  of  his  other  work;  and 
it  is  the  mission,  not  of  science,  but  of  literature, 
to  quicken  our  love  for  animals,  even  for  truth. 
Science  only  adds  to  the  truth.  Yet  here,  in 
spite  of  himself,  Mr.  Burroughs  is  more  the  writer, 
more  the  interpreter,  than  the  investigator.  He  is 
constantly  forgetting  his  scientific  thesis,  as,  for 
instance,  in  the  account  of  his  neighbor's  errant 
cow.  He  succeeds  finally,  however,  in  reducing 
her  fairly  well  to  a  mechanical  piece  of  beef  act- 
ing to  vegetable  stimuli  upon  a  nerve  ganglion 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  161 

located  somewhere  in  the  region  between  her 
horns  and  her  tail. 

Now,  all  this  is  valuable,  and  the  use  made  of 
it  is  laudable,  but  would  we  not  rather  have  the 
account  than  the  cow,  especially  from  Mr.  Bur- 
roughs ?  Certainly,  because  to  us  it  is  the  account 
that  he  has  come  to  stand  for.  And  so,  if  we  do 
not  love  his  scientific  animals  more,  and  his  sci- 
entific findings  more,  we  shall,  I  think,  love  all 
his  other  books  more ;  for  we  see  now  that,  from 
the  beginning,  he  has  regarded  the  facts  of  na- 
ture as  the  solid  substance  of  his  books,  to  be 
kept  as  free  from  fancy  and  from  false  report,  as 
his  interpretation  of  them  is  to  be  kept  free  from 
all  exaggeration  and  cant. 

Here,  then,  are  eleven  volumes  of  honest  see- 
ing, honest  feeling,  honest  reporting.  Such  hon- 
esty of  itself  may  not  make  good  nature-literature, 
but  without  such  honesty  there  can  be  no  good 
nature-literature. 

Nature-literature  is  not  less  than  the  truth,  but 
more;  how  much  more,  Mr.  Burroughs  himself 
suggests  to  us  in  a  passage  about  his  literary 
habits. 

"  For  my  part,"  he  says,  "  I  can  never  inter- 


i6a     THE   FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

view  nature  in  the  reporter  fashion.  I  must  camp 
and  tramp  with  her  to  get  any  good,  and  what  I 
get  I  absorb  through  my  emotions  rather  than 
consciously  gather  through  my  intellect.  ...  An 
experience  must  lie  in  my  mind  a  certain  time 
before  I  can  put  it  upon  paper — say  from  three 
to  six  months.  If  there  is  anything  in  it,  it  will 
ripen  and  mellow  by  that  time.  I  rarely  take 
any  notes,  and  I  have  a  very  poor  memory,  but 
rely  upon  the  affinity  of  my  mind  for  a  certain 
order  of  truths  or  observations.  What  is  mine 
will  stick  to  me,  and  what  is  not  will  drop  off. 
We  who  write  about  nature  pick  out,  I  suspect, 
only  the  rare  moments  when  we  have  had  glimpses 
of  her,  and  make  much  of  them.  Our  lives  are 
dull,  our  minds  crusted  over  with  rubbish  like 
those  of  other  people.  Then  writing  about  na- 
ture, or  about  most  other  subjects,  is  an  expansive 
process;  we  are  under  the  law  of  evolution;  we 
grow  the  germ  into  the  tree;  a  little  original 
observation  goes  a  good  way."  For  "  when  you 
go  to  nature,  bring  us  good  science  or  else  good 
literature,  and  not  a  mere  inventory  of  what  you 
have  seen.  One  demonstrates,  the  other  inter- 
prets." 


JOHN   BURROUGHS  163 

Careful  as  Mr.  Burroughs  has  been  with  his 
facts,  so  careful  as  often  to  bring  us  excellent 
science,  he  yet  has  left  us  no  inventory  of  the 
out-of-doors.  His  work  is  literature;  he  is  not  a 
demonstrator,  but  an  interpreter,  an  expositor 
who  is  true  to  the  text  and  true  to  the  whole  of 
the  context. 

Our  pleasure  in  Mr.  Burroughs  as  an  inter- 
preter comes  as  much  from  his  wholesome  good 
sense,  from  his  balance  and  sanity,  I  think,  as 
from  the  assurance  of  his  sincerity.  Free  from 
pose  and  cant  and  deception,  he  is  free  also  from 
bias  and  strain.  There  is  something  ordinary, 
normal,  reasonable,  companionable,  about  him; 
an  even  tenor  to  all  his  ways,  a  deliberateness, 
naturalness  to  all  his  paths,  as  if  they  might  have 
been  made  originally  by  the  cows.  So  they  were. 

If  Mr.  Burroughs  were  to  start  from  my  door 
for  a  tramp  over  these  small  Hingham  hills  he 
would  cross  the  trout-brook  by  my  neighbor's 
stone  bridge,  and  nibbling  a  spear  of  peppermint 
on  the  way,  would  follow  the  lane  and  the  cow- 
paths  across  the  pasture.  Thoreau  would  pick 
out  the  deepest  hole  in  the  brook  and  try  to 
swim  across;  he  would  leap  the  stone  walls  of 


1 64     THE   FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

the  lane,  cut  a  bee-line  through  the  pasture,  and 
drop,  for  his  first  look  at  the  landscape,  to  the 
bottom  of  the  pit  in  the  seam-face  granite  quarry. 
Here  he  would  pull  out  his  note-book  and  a 
gnarly  wild  apple  from  his  pocket,  and  intensely, 
critically,  chemically,  devouring  said  apple,  make 
note  in  the  book  that  the  apples  of  Eden  were 
flat,  the  apples  of  Sodom  bitter,  but  this  wild, 
tough,  wretched,  impossible  apple  of  the  Hing- 
ham  hills  united  all  ambrosial  essences  in  its 
striking  odor  of  squash-bugs. 

Mr.  Burroughs  takes  us  along  with  him.  Tho- 
reau  comes  upon  us  in  the  woods  — jumps  out 
at  us  from  behind  some  bush,  with  a  "Scatl" 
Burroughs  brings  us  home  in  time  for  tea ;  Tho- 
reau  leaves  us  tangled  up  in  the  briars. 

It  won't  hurt  us  to  be  jumped  at  now  and  then 
and  told  to  "  scat  /"  It  won't  hurt  us  to  be  digged 
by  the  briars.  It  is  good  for  us,  otherwise  we 
might  forget  that  we  are  beneath  our  clothes.  It 
is  good  for  us  and  highly  diverting,  but  highly 
irritating  too. 

For  my  part,  when  I  take  up  an  outdoor 
book  I  am  glad  if  there  is  quiet  in  it,  and  fra- 
grance, and  something  of  the  saneness  and  sweet- 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  165 

ness  of  the  sky.  Not  that  I  always  want  swe<  t 
skies.  It  is  ninety-eight  degrees  in  the  shade,  and 
three  weeks  since  there  fell  a  drop  of  rain.  I 
could  sing  like  a  robin  for  a  sizzling,  crackling 
thunder-shower  —  less  for  the  sizzling  and  crack- 
ling than  for  the  shower.  Thoreau  is  a  succession 
of  showers  —  "tempests";  his  pages  are  sheet- 
lightning,  electrifying,  purifying,  illuminating, 
but  not  altogether  conducive  to  peace.  There  is 
a  clear  sky  to  most  of  Mr.  Burroughs's  pages,  a 
rural  landscape,  wide,  gently  rolling,  with  cattle 
standing  here  and  there  beneath  the  trees. 

Mr.  Burroughs's  natural  history  is  entirely  nat- 
ural, his  philosophy  entirely  reasonable,  his  reli- 
gion and  ethics  very  much  of  the  kind  we  wish 
our  minister  and  our  neighbor  might  possess; 
and  his  manner  of  writing  is  so  unaffected  that 
we  feel  we  could  write  in  such  a  manner  ourselves. 
Only  we  cannot. 

Since  the  time  he  can  be  said  to  have  "  led  "  a 
life,  Mr.  Burroughs  has  led  a  literary  life ;  that 
is  to  say,  nothing  has  been  allowed  to  interfere 
with  his  writing ;  yet  the  writing  has  not  been 
allowed  to  interfere  with  a  quiet  successful  busi- 
ness,—  with  his  raising  of  grapes. 


i66     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

He  has  a  study  and  a  vineyard. 

Not  many  men  ought  to  live  by  the  pen  alone. 
A  steady  diet  of  inspiration  and  words  is  hard 
on  the  literary  health.  The  writing  should  be 
varied  with  some  good  wholesome  work,  actual 
hard  work  for  the  hands;  not  so  much  work, 
perhaps,  as  one  would  find  in  an  eighteen-acre 
vineyard;  yet  Mr.  Burroughs's  eighteen  acres 
have  certainly  proved  no  check  —  rather,  indeed, 
a  stimulus  —  to  his  writing.  He  seems  to  have 
gathered  a  volume  out  of  every  acre ;  and  he 
seems  to  have  put.  a  good  acre  into  every  volume. 
"  Fresh  Fields  "  is  the  name  of  one  of  the  vol- 
umes, "Leaf  and  Tendril"  of  another;  but  the 
freshness  of  his  fields,  the  leaves  and  the  tendrils 
of  his  vineyard,  enter  into  them  all.  The  grapes 
of  the  vineyard  are  in  them  also. 

Here  is  a  growth  of  books  out  of  the  soil, 
books  that  have  been  trimmed,  trained,  sprayed, 
and  kept  free  from  rot.  Such  books  may  not 
be  altogether  according  to  the  public  taste;  they 
will  keep,  however,  until  the  public  acquires  a 
better  taste.  Sound,  ripe,  fresh,  early  and  late, 
a  full  crop  !  Has  the  vineyard  anything  to  do 
with  it  ? 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  167 

It  is  not  every  farmer  who  should  go  to  writ- 
ing, nor  every  writer  who  should  go  to  farming; 
but  there  is  a  mighty  waste  of  academic  literature, 
of  premature,  precocious,  lily-handed  literature, 
of  chicken-licken  literature,  because  the  writers 
do  not  know  a  spade  when  they  see  one,  would 
not  call  it  a  spade  if  they  knew.  Those  writers 
need  to  do  less  writing  and  more  farming,  more 
real  work  with  their  soft  hands  in  partnership 
with  the  elemental  forces  of  nature,  or  in  com- 
radeship with  average  elemental  men  —  the  only 
species  extant  of  the  quality  to  make  writing 
worth  while. 

Mr.  Burroughs  has  had  this  labor,  this  partner- 
ship, this  comradeship.  His  writing  is  seasoned 
and  sane.  It  is  ripe,  and  yet  as  fresh  as  green 
corn  with  the  dew  in  the  silk.  You  have  eaten 
corn  on  the  cob  just  from  the  stalk  and  steamed 
in  its  own  husk  *?  Green  corn  that  is  corn,  that 
has  all  its-  milk  and  sugar  and  flavor,  is  corn  on 
the  cob,  and  in  the  husk,  —  is  cob  and  kernel  and 
husk,  —  not  a  stripped  ear  that  is  cooked  into 
the  kitchen  air. 

Literature  is  too  often  stripped  of  its  human 
husk,  and   cut  from   its  human  cob  :    the   man 


168     THE  FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

gone,  the  writer  left;  the  substance  gone,  the 
style  left  —  corn  that  tastes  as  much  like  corn  as 
it  tastes  like  puffed  rice,  —  which  tastes  like  no- 
thing at  all.  There  is  the  sweetness  of  the  husk, 
the  flavor  of  the  cob,  the  substance  of  the  uncut 
corn  to  Mr.  Burroughs. 

There  is  no  lack  of  cob  and  husk  to  Thoreau, 
of  shell  and  hull,  one  should  say,  for  he  is  more 
like  a  green  walnut  than  an  ear  of  green  corn. 
Thoreau  is  very  human,  a  whole  man ;  but  he  is 
almost  as  much  a  tree,  and  a  mountain,  and  a 
pond,  and  a  spell  of  weather,  and  a  state  of 
morals.  He  is  the  author  of  "Walden,"  and 
nobody  else  in  the  world  is  that ;  he  is  a  lover 
of  nature,  as  ardent  a  lover  as  ever  eloped  with 
her ;  he  is  a  lover  of  men,  too,  loving  them  with 
an  intensity  that  hates  them  bag  and  baggage ; 
he  is  poetical,  prophetic,  paradoxical,  and  utterly 
impossible. 

But  he  knew  it.  Born  in  Concord,  under  the 
transcendental  stars,  at  a  time  when  Delphic  say- 
ings and  philosophy,  romance  and  poetry  ran  wild 
in  the  gardens  where  Bouncing-Bet  and  Way- 
ward Charlie  now  run  wild,  Thoreau  knew  that 
he  was  touched,  and  that  all  his  neighbors  were 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  169 

touched,  and  sought  asylum  at  Walden.  But 
Walden  was  not  distant  enough.  If  Mr.  Bur- 
roughs in  Roxbury,  New  York,  found  it  neces- 
sary to  take  to  the  woods  in  order  to  escape  from 
Emerson,  then  Thoreau  should  have  gone  to 
Chicago,  or  to  Xamiltapec. 

It  is  the  strain,  in  Thoreau,  that  wearies  us; 
his  sweating  among  the  stumps  and  woodchucks, 
for  a  bean  crop  netting  him  eight  dollars,  seventy- 
one  and  one  half  cents.  But  such  beans !  Beans 
with  minds  and  souls!  Yet,  for  baking,  plain 
beans  are  better  than  these  transcendental  beans, 
because  your  transcendental  beans  are  always 
baked  without  pork.  A  family  man,  however,  can- 
not contemplate  that  piddling  patch  with  any  pa- 
tience, even  though  he  have  a  taste  for  literature 
as  real  as  his  taste  for  beans.  It  is  better  to  watch 
Mr.  Burroughs  pruning  his  grape-vines  for  a 
crop  to  net  him  one  thousand,  three  hundred  and 
twenty-five  dollars,  and  no  cents,  and  no  half- 
cents.  Here  are  eighteen  acres  to  be  cultivated, 
whose  fruit  is  to  be  picked,  shipped,  and  sold  in 
the  New  York  markets  at  a  profit  —  a  profit 
plainly  felt  in  Mr.  Burroughs's  books. 

The  most  worthy  qualities  of  good  writing  are 


170     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

those  least  noticeable,  —  negative  qualities  of  hon- 
esty, directness,  sincerity,  euphony;  noticeable 
only  by  their  absence.  Yet  in  Mr.  Burroughs 
they  amount  to  a  positive  charm.  Indeed,  are 
not  these  same  negative  qualities  the  very  sub- 
stance of  good  style  ?  Such  style  as  is  had  by  a 
pair  of  pruning-shears,  as  is  embodied  in  the  ex- 
quisite lines  of  a  flying  swallow  —  the  style  that 
is  perfect,  purposeful  adaptability? 

But  there  is  more  than  efficiency  to  Mr.  Bur- 
roughs^ style ;  there  are  strengths  and  graces  ex- 
isting in  and  for  themselves.  Here  is  a  natural- 
ist who  has  studied  the  art  of  writing.  "  What 
little  merit  my  style  has,"  he  declares,  "is  the 
result  of  much  study  and  discipline."  And  whose 
style,  if  it  be  style  at  all,  is  not  the  result  of  much 
study  and  discipline.  Flourish,  fine-writing,  wordi- 
ness, obscurity,  and  cant  are  exorcised  in  no  other 
way ;  and  as  for  the  "  limpidness,  sweetness,  fresh- 
ness," which  Mr.  Burroughs  says  should  charac- 
terize outdoor  writing,  and  which  do  characterize 
his  writing,  how  else  than  by  study  and  discipline 
shall  they  be  obtained  ? 

Outdoor  literature,  no  less  than  other  types 
of  literature,  is  both  form  and  matter ;  the  two 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  i7i 

are  mutually  dependent,  inseparably  one  ;  but 
the  writer  is  most  faithful  to  the  form  when  he  is 
most  careful  of  the  matter.  It  makes  a  vast  dif- 
ference whether  his  interest  is  absorbed  by  what 
he  has  to  say,  or  by  the  possible  ways  lie  may  say 
it.  If  Mr.  Burroughs  writes  in  his  shirt-sleeves, 
as  a  recent  critic  says  he  does,  it  is  because  he 
goes  about  his  writing  as  he  goes  about  his  vine- 
yarding —  for  grapes,  for  thoughts,  and  not  to 
see  how  pretty  he  can  make  a  paragraph  look, 
or  into  what  fantastic  form  he  can  train  a  vine. 
The  vine  is  lovely  in  itself,  —  if  it  bear  fruit. 

And  so  is  language.  Take  Mr.  Burroughs's  man- 
ner in  any  of  its  moods:  its  store  of  single,  suffi- 
cient words,  for  instance,  especially  the  homely, 
rugged  words  and  idioms,  and  the  flavor  they 
give,  is  second  to  the  work  they  do ;  or  take  his 
use  of  figures  —  when  he  speaks  of  De  Quin- 
cey's  "  discursive,  roundabout  style,  herding  his 
thoughts  as  a  collie  dog  herds  sheep,"  —  and 
unexpected,  vivid,  apt  as  they  are,  they  are  even 
more  effective.  One  is  often  caught  up  by  the 
poetry  of  these  essays  and  borne  aloft,  but  never 
on  a  gale  of  words  ;  the  lift  and  sweep  are  genu- 
ine emotion  and  thought. 


i72     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

As  an  essayist,  —  as  a  nature-writer  I  ought  to 
say,  —  Mr.  Burroughs's  literary  care  is  perhaps 
nowhere  so  plainly  seen  as  in  the  simple  archi- 
tecture of  his  essay  plans,  in  their  balance  and 
finish,  a  quality  that  distinguishes  him  from 
others  of  the  craft,  and  that  neither  gift  nor 
chance  could  so  invariably  supply.  The  common 
fault  of  outdoor  books  is  the  catalogue — raw 
data,  notes.  There  are  paragraphs  of  notes  in 
Mr.  Burroughs,  volumes  of  them  in  Thoreau. 
The  average  nature-writer  sees  not  too  much  of 
nature,  but  knows  all  too  little  of  literary  values; 
he  sees  everything,  gets  a  meaning  out  of  no- 
thing; writes  it  all  down;  and  gives  us  what  he 
sees,  which  is  precisely  what  everybody  may  see ; 
whereas,  we  want  also  what  he  thinks  and  feels. 
Some  of  our  present  writers  do  nothing  but  feel 
and  divine  and  fathom  —  the  animal  psycho- 
logists, whatever  they  are.  The  bulk  of  nature- 
writing,  however,  is  journalistic,  done  on  the 
spot,  into  a  note-book,  as  were  the  journals  of 
Thoreau  —  fragmentary,  yet  with  Thoreau  often 
exquisite  fragments  —  bits  of  old  stained  glass, 
unleaded,  and  lacking  unity  and  design. 

No  such  fault  can  be  found  with  Mr.  Bur- 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  1-3 

roughs.  He  goes  pencilless  into  the  woods,  and 
waits  before  writing  until  his  return  home,  until 
time  has  elapsed  for  the  multitudinous  details  of 
the  trip  to  blur  and  blend,  leaving  only  the  dom- 
inant facts  and  impressions  for  his  pen.  Every 
part  of  his  work  is  of  selected  stock,  as  free  from 
knots  and  seams  and  sap-wood  as  a  piece  of  old- 
growth  pine.  There  is  plan,  proportion,  integrity 
to  his  essays  —  the  naturalist  living  faithfully  up 
to  a  sensitive  literary  conscience. 

Mr.  Burroughs  is  a  good  but  not  a  great 
naturalist,  as  Audubon  and  Gray  were  great 
naturalists.  His  claim  (and  Audubon's  in  part) 
upon  us  is  literary.  He  has  been  a  watcher  in  the 
woods ;  has  made  a  few  pleasant  excursions  into 
the  primeval  wilderness,  leaving  his  gun  at  home, 
and  his  camera,  too,  thank  Heaven  !  He  has 
broken  out  no  new  trail,  discovered  no  new  ani- 
mal, no  new  thing.  But  he  has  seen  all  the  old, 
uncommon  things,  has  seen  them  oftener,  lias 
watched  them  longer,  through  more  seasons,  than 
any  other  writer  of  our  out-of-doors ;  and  though 
he  has  discovered  no  new  thing,  yet  he  has  made 
discoveries,  volumes  of  them,  —  contributions 
largely  to  our  stock  of  literature,  and  to  our  store 


174     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

of  love  for  the  earth,  and  to  our  joy  in  living 
upon  it.  He  has  turned  a  little  of  the  universe 
into  literature;  has  translated  a  portion  of  the 
earth  into  human  language;  has  restored  to  us 
our  garden  here  eastward  in  Eden — apple  tree 
and  all. 

For  a  real  taste  of  fruity  literature,  try  Mr.  Bur- 
roughs's  chapter  on  "The  Apple."  Try  Tho- 
reau's,  too,  —  if  you  are  partial  to  squash-bugs. 
There  are  chapters  in  Mr.  Burroughs,  such  as 
44  Is  it  going  to  Rain  ?  "  "A  River  View,"  "  A 
Snow-Storm,"  which  seem  to  me  as  perfect,  in 
their  way,  as  anything  that  has  ever  been  done 
—  single,  simple,  beautiful  in  form,  and  deeply 
significant ;  the  storm  being  a  piece  of  fine  de- 
scription, of  whirling  snow  across  a  geologic  land- 
scape, distant,  and  as  dark  as  eternity ;  the  whole 
wintry  picture  lighted  and  warmed  at  the  end  by 
a  glowing  touch  of  human  life  :  — 

"  We  love  the  sight  of  the  brown  and  ruddy 
earth;  it  is  the  color  of  life,  while  a  snow-covered 
plain  is  the  face  of  death;  yet  snow  is  but  the 
mark  of  life-giving  rain;  it,  too,  is  the  friend  of 
man  —  the  tender,  sculpturesque,  immaculate, 
warming,  fertilizing  snow." 


JOHN    BURROUGHS  i7J 

There  are  many  texts  in  these  eleven  volumes, 
many  themes ;  and  in  them  all  there  is  one  real 
message:  that  this  is  a  good  world  to  live  in; 
that  these  are  good  men  and  women  to  live 
with;  that  life  is  good,  here  and  now,  and  alto- 
gether worth  living. 


VII 
HUNTING   THE   SNOW 


HUNTING  THE  SNOW 

,he  hunt  began  at  the  hen-yard  gate, 
where  we  saw  tracks  in  the  thin, 
new  snow  that  led  us  up  the  ridge, 
and  along  its  narrow  back,  to  a  hol- 
low stump.  Here  the  hunt  began  in 
earnest,  for  not  until  that  trail  of  close,  double, 
nail-pointed  prints  went  under  the  stump  were 
the  three  small  boys  convinced  that  we  were 
tracking  a  skunk  and  not  a  cat. 

This  creature  had  moved  leisurely.  That  you 
could  tell  by  the  closeness  of  the  prints.  Wide- 
apart  tracks  in  the  snow  mean  hurry.  Now  a  cat, 
going  as  slowly  as  this  creature  went,  would  have 
put  down  her  dainty  feet  almost  in  single  line, 
and  would  have  left  round,  cushion-marked  holes 
in  the  snow,  not  triangular,  nail-pointed  prints 
like  these.  Cats  do  not  venture  into  holes  under 
stumps,  either. 

We  had  bagged  our  first  quarry !  No,  no ! 
We  had  not  pulled  that  wood  pussy  out  of  his 
hole  and  put  him  into  our  game-bag.  We  did 


180    THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

not  want  to  do  that.  We  really  carried  no  bag ; 
and  if  we  had,  we  should  not  have  put  the  wood 
pussy  in  it,  for  we  were  hunting  tracks,  not  the 
animals,  and  "  bagging  our  quarry  "  meant  trail- 
ing a  creature  to  its  den,  or  following  its  track 
until  we  had  discovered  something  it  had  done, 
or  what  its  business  was,  and  why  it  was  out. 
We  were  on  the  snow  for  animal  facts,  not  ani- 
mal pelts. 

We  were  elated  with  our  luck,  for  this  stump 
was  not  five  minutes  by  the  steep  ridge  path 
from  the  hen-yard.  And  here,  standing  on  the 
stump,  we  were  only  sixty  minutes  away  from 
Boston  Common  by  the  automobile,  driving  no 
faster  than  the  law  allows.  So  we  were  not  hunt- 
ing in  a  wilderness,  but  just  outside  our  dooryard 
and  almost  within  the  borders  of  a  great  city. 

And  that  is  the  interesting  fact  of  our  morning 
hunt.  No  one  but  a  lover  of  the  woods  and  a 
careful  walker  on  the  snow  would  believe  that 
here  in  the  midst  of  hay-fields,  in  sight  of  the 
smoke  of  city  factories,  so  many  of  the  original 
wild  wood-folk  still  live  and  travel  their  night 
paths  undisturbed. 

Still,  this  is   a  rather  rough  bit  of  country, 


HUNTING   THE   SNOW  181 

broken,  ledgy,  boulder-strewn,  which  accounts 
for  the  swamps  and  woody  hills  that  alternate  with 
small  towns  and  cultivated  fields  all  the  way  to 
the  Blue  Hill  Reservation,  fifteen  miles  to  the 
westward.  This  whole  region,  this  dooryard  of 
Boston,  is  one  of  Nature's  own  reservations,  a  pre- 
serve that  she  has  kept  for  her  small  and  humble 
folk,  who  are  just  as  dear  to  her  as  we  are,  but 
whom  we  have  driven,  except  in  such  small 
places  as  these,  quite  off  the  earth. 

Here,  however,  they  are  still  at  home,  as  this 
hole  of  the  skunk's  under  the  stump  proved. 
But  there  was  more  proof  As  we  topped  the 
ridge  on  the  trail  of  the  skunk,  we  crossed  an- 
other trail,  made  up  of  bunches  of  four  prints, — 
two  long  and  broad,  two  small  and  roundish,  — 
spaced  about  a  yard  apart. 

A  hundred  times,  the  winter  before,  we  had 
tried  that  trail  in  the  hope  of  finding  the  form  or 
the  burrow  of  its  maker,  the  great  Northern  hare, 
but  it  crossed  and  turned  and  doubled,  and  al- 
ways led  us  into  a  tangle,  out  of  which  we  never 
got  a  clue. 

As  this  was  the  first  tracking  snow  of  the  win- 
ter, we  were  relieved  to  see  the  strong  prints  of 


182     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

our  cunning  neighbor  again,  for  what  with  the 
foxes  and  the  hunters,  we  were  afraid  it  might 
have  fared  ill  with  him.  But  here  he  was,  with 
four  good  legs  under  him;  and  after  bagging 
our  skunk,  we  returned  to  pick  up  the  hare's 
trail,  to  try  our  luck  once  more. 

We  brought  him  in  long,  leisurely  leaps  down 
the  ridge,  out  into  our  mowing  field,  and  over  to 
the  birches  below  the  house.  Here  he  had  capered 
about  in  the  snow,  had  stood  up  on  his  haunches 
and  gnawed  the  bark  from  off  a  green  oak  sucker 
two  and  a  half  feet  from  the  ground.  This,  doubt- 
less, was  pretty  near  his  length,  stretched  out  —  an 
interesting  item ;  not  exact  to  the  inch,  perhaps, 
but  close  enough  for  us ;  and  much  more  fasci- 
nating, guessed  at  by  such  a  rule,  than  if  measured 
dead,  with  scientific  accuracy. 

Nor  was  this  all,  for  up  the  foot-path  through 
the  birches  came  the  marks  of  two  dogs.  They 
joined  the  marks  of  the  hare.  And  then,  back 
along  the  edge  of  the  woods  to  the  bushy  ridge, 
we  saw  a  pretty  race. 

It  was  all  in  our  imaginations,  all  done  for  us 
by  those  long-flinging  footprints  in  the  snow. 
But  we  saw  it  all  —  the  white  hare,  the  yelling 


HUNTING   THE   SNOW  183 

hounds,  nip  and  tuck,  in  a  burst  of  speed  across 
the  open  field  that  left  a  gap  in  the  wind  be- 
hind. 

It  had  all  come  as  a  surprise.  The  hounds  had 
climbed  the  hill  on  the  scent  of  a  fox,  and  had 
"jumped  "  the  hare  unexpectedly.  But  just  such 
a  jump  of  fear  is  what  a  hare's  magnificent  legs 
were  intended  for. 

They  carried  him  a  clear  twelve  feet  in  some 
of  the  longest  leaps  for  the  ridge,  and  they  carried 
him  to  safety,  so  far  as  we  could  read  the  snow. 
In  the  medley  of  hare-and-hound  tracks  on  the 
ridge  there  was  no  sign  of  a  tragedy.  He  had 
escaped  again  —  but  how  and  where  we  have  still 
to  learn. 

We  had  bagged  our  hare,  —  yet  still  we  have 
him  to  bag,  —  and  taking  up  the  trail  of  one  of 
the  dogs,  we  continued  our  hunt. 

One  of  the  joys  of  this  snow- walking  is  having 
a  definite  road  or  trail  blazed  for  you  by  know- 
ing, purposeful  feet.  You  do  not  have  to  blunder 
ahead,  breaking  your  way  into  this  wilderness 
world,  trusting  luck  to  bring  you  somewhere. 
The  wild  animal  or  the  dog  goes  this  way,  and 
not  that,  for  a  reason.  You  are  following  that 


1 84     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

reason   all  along;  you  are   pack-fellow  to   the 
hound ;  you  hunt  with  him. 

Here  the  hound  had  thrust  his  muzzle  into  a 
snow-capped  pile  of  slashings,  had  gone  clear 
round  the  pile,  then  continued  on  his  way.  But 
we  stopped,  for  out  of  the  pile,  in  a  single,  direct 
line,  ran  a  number  of  mice-prints,  going  and 
coming.  A  dozen  white-footed  mice  might  have 
traveled  that  road  since  the  day  before,  when 
the  snow  had  ceased  falling. 

We  entered  the  tiny  road  (for  in  this  kind  of 
hunting  a  mouse  is  as  good  as  a  mink),  and  found 
ourselves  descending  the  woods  toward  the  gar- 
den-patch below.  Halfway  down  we  came  to  a 
great  red  oak,  into  a  hole  at  the  base  of  which,  as 
into  the  portal  of  some  mighty  castle,  ran  the 
road  of  the  mice.  That  was  the  end  of  it.  There 
was  not  a  single  straying  footprint  beyond  the 
tree. 

I  reached  in  as  far  as  my  arm  would  go,  and 
drew  out  a  fistful  of  pop-corn  cobs.  So  here  was 
part  of  my  scanty  crop !  I  pushed  in  again,  and 
gathered  up  a  bunch  of  chestnut  shells,  hickory- 
nuts,  and  several  neatly  rifled  hazelnuts.  This 
was  story  enough.   There  was  a  nest,  or  family, 


HUNTING  THE  SNOW  185 

of  mice  living  under  the  slashing  pile,  who  for 
some  good  reason  kept  their  stores  here  in  the 
recesses  of  this  ancient  red  oak.  Or  was  this 
some  squirrel's  barn  being  pilfered  by  the  mice, 
as  my  barn  is  the  year  round  ?  It  was  not  all 
plain.  But  this  question,  this  constant  riddle  of 
the  woods,  —  small,  indeed,  in  the  case  of  the 
mouse,  and  involving  no  great  fate  in  its  solu- 
tion, —  is  part  of  our  constant  joy  in  the  woods. 
Life  is  always  new,  always  strange,  always  fasci- 
nating. 

It  has  all  been  studied  and  classified  accord- 
ing to  species.  Any  one  knowing  the  woods  at 
all  would  know  that  these  were  mice-tracks, 
the  tracks  of  the  white-footed  mouse,  even,  and 
not  the  tracks  of  the  jumping  mouse,  the  house 
mouse,  or  the  meadow  mouse.  But  what  is  the 
whole  small  story  of  these  prints?  What  pur- 
pose, intention,  feeling  do  they  spell  ?  What  and 
why  ?  —  a  hundred  times  ! 

But  the  scientific  books  are  dumb.  Indeed, 
they  do  not  consider  such  questions  worth  an- 
swering, just  as  under  the  species  Mus  they  make 
no  record  of  the  fact  that 

The  present  only  toucheth  thee. 


186     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

But  that  is  a  poem.  Burns  discovered  that  — 
Burns,  the  farmer!  The  woods  and  fields  are 
poem-full,  and  it  is  largely  because  we  do  not 
know,  and  never  can  know,  just  all  that  the  tiny 
snow-prints  of  a  wood-mouse  may  mean,  nor 
understand  just  what 

root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 

the  humblest  flower  is. 

The  pop-corn  cobs,  however,  were  a  known 
quantity,  a  tangible  fact,  and  falling  in  with  a 
gray  squirrel's  track  not  far  from  the  red  oak,  we 
went  on,  our  game-bag  heavier,  our  hearts  lighter 
at  the  thought  that  we,  by  the  sweat  of  our  brow, 
had  contributed  a  few  ears  of  corn  to  the  com- 
fort of  this  snowy  winter  world. 

The  squirrel's  track  wound  up  and  down  the 
hillside,  wove  in  and  out  and  round  and  round, 
hitting  every  possible  tree,  as  if  the  only  road  for 
a  squirrel  was  one  that  looped  and  doubled  and 
tied  up  every  stump  and  zigzagged  into  every  tree 
trunk  in  the  woods. 

But  all  this  maze  was  no  ordinary  journey. 
The  squirrel  had  not  run  this  coil  of  a  road  for 
breakfast,  because  when  he  travels,  say,  for  dis- 
tant nuts,  he  goes  as  directly  as  you  go  to  your 


HUNTING   THE   SNOW  187 

school  or  office ;  but  he  goes  not  by  streets,  but 
by  trees,  never  crossing  more  of  the  open  in  a 
single  rush  than  the  space  between  him  and  the 
nearest  tree  that  will  take  him  on  his  way. 

What  interested  us  here  in  the  woods  was  the 
fact  that  a  second  series  of  tracks  just  like  the 
first,  only  about  half  as  large,  dogged  the  larger 
tracks  persistently,  leaping  tree  for  tree,  and  land- 
ing track  for  track  with  astonishing  accuracy  — 
tracks  which,  had  they  not  been  evidently  those 
of  a  smaller  squirrel,  would  have  read  to  us  most 
menacingly. 

As  this  was  the  mating  season  for  squirrels, 
I  suggested  that  it  might  have  been  a  kind  of 
Atalanta's  race  here  in  the  woods.  But  why  did 
so  little  a  squirrel  want  to  marry  one  so  big'? 
They  would  not  look  well  together,  was  the  an- 
swer of  the  small  boys.  They  thought  it  much 
more  likely  that  Father  Squirrel  had  been  play- 
ing wood-tag  with  one  of  his  children. 

Then,  suddenly,  as  sometimes  happens  in  the 
woods,  the  true  meaning  of  the  signs  was  literally 
hurled  at  us,  for  down  the  hill,  squealing  and  pant- 
ing, rushed  a  large  male  gray  squirrel,  with  a  red 
squirrel  like  a  shadow,  like  a  weasel,  at  his  heels. 


188     THE   FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

For  just  an  instant  I  thought  it  was  a  weasel, 
so  swift  and  silent  and  gliding  were  its  move- 
ments, so  set  and  cruel  seemed  its  expression,  so 
sure,  so  inevitable  its  victory. 

Whether  it  ever  caught  the  gray  squirrel  or 
not,  and  what  it  would  have  done  had  it  caught 
the  big  fellow,  I  do  not  know.  But  I  have  seen 
the  chase  often  —  the  gray  squirrel  put  to  the  last 
extremity  with  fright  and  fatigue,  the  red  squirrel 
an  avenging,  inexorable  fate  behind.  They  tore 
round  and  round  us,  then  up  over  the  hill,  and 
disappeared. 

One  of  the  rarest  prints  for  most  snow-hunters 
nowadays,  but  one  of  the  commonest  hereabouts, 
is  the  quick,  sharp  track  of  the  fox.  In  the  spring 
particularly,  when  my  fancy  young  chickens  are 
turned  out  to  pasture,  I  have  spells  of  fearing  that 
the  fox  will  never  be  exterminated  here  in  this 
untillable  but  beautiful  chicken  country.  In  the 
winter,  however,  when  I  see  Reynard's  trail  across 
my  lawn,  when  I  hear  the  music  of  the  baying 
hounds,  and  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  white-tipped 
brush  swinging  serenely  in  advance  of  the  com- 
ing pack,  I  cannot  but  admire  the  capable,  cun- 
ning rascal,  cannot  but  be  glad  for  him,  and  marvel 


HUNTING  THE   SNOW  189 

at  him,  so  resourceful,  so  superior  to  his  almost 
impossible  conditions,  his  almost  innumerable 
foes. 

We  started  across  the  meadow  on  his  trail,  but 
found  it  leading  so  straightaway  for  the  ledges, 
and  so  continuously  blotted  out  by  the  passing 
of  the  pack,  that,  striking  the  wallowy  path  of 
a  muskrat  in  the  middle  of  the  meadow,  we 
took  up  the  new  scent  to  see  what  the  shuf- 
fling, cowering  water-rat  wanted  from  across  the 
snow. 

A  man  is  known  by  the  company  he  keeps,  by 
the  way  he  wears  his  hat,  by  the  manner  of  his 
laugh ;  but  among  the  wild  animals  nothing  tells 
more  of  character  than  their  manner  of  moving. 
You  can  read  animal  character  as  easily  in  the 
snow  as  you  can  read  act  and  direction. 

The  timidity,  the  indecision,  the  lack  of  pur- 
pose, the  restless,  meaningless  curiosity  of  this 
muskrat  were  evident  from  the  first  in  the  log- 
like, the  starting,  stopping,  returning,  going-on 
track  he  had  ploughed  out  in  the  thin  snow. 

He  did  not  know  where  he  was  going  or  what 
he  was  going  for ;  he  knew  only  that  he  insisted 
upon  going  back,  but  all  the  while  kept  going 


190     THE  FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

on ;  that  he  wanted  to  go  to  the  right  or  to  the 
left,  yet  kept  moving  straight  ahead. 

We  came  to  a  big  wallow  in  the  snow,  where, 
in  sudden  fear,  he  had  had  a  fit  at  the  thought  of 
something  that  might  not  have  happened  to  him 
had  he  stayed  at  home.  Every  foot  of  the  trail 
read,  "He  would  if  he  could;  but  if  he  would  n't, 
how  could  he?" 

We  followed  him  on,  across  a  dozen  other 
trails,  for  it  is  not  every  winter  night  that  the 
muskrat's  feet  get  the  better  of  his  head,  and, 
willy-nilly,  take  him  abroad.  Strange  and  fatal 
weakness !  He  goes  and  cannot  stop. 

Along  the  stone  wall  of  the  meadow  we  tracked 
him,  across  the  highroad,  over  our  garden,  into  the 
orchard,  up  the  woody  hill  to  the  yard,  back  down 
the  hill  to  the  orchard,  out  into  the  garden,  and 
back  toward  the  orchard  again ;  and  here,  on  a 
knoll  just  in  the  edge  of  the  scanty,  skeleton 
shadow  where  the  moon  fell  through  the  trees,  we 
lost  him. 

Two  mighty  wings  had  touched  the  snow  lightly 
here,  and  the  lumbering  trail  had  vanished  as  into 
the  air. 

Close  and  mysterious  the  silent  wings  hang 


HUNTING  THE   SNOW  191 

poised  indoors  and  out.  Laughter  and  tears  are 
companions.  Comedy  begins,  but  tragedy  often 
ends  the  trail.  Yet  the  sum  of  life  indoors  and 
out  is  peace,  gladness,  and  fulfillment. 


VIII 
THE  CLAM   FARM 


THE   CLAM   FARM: 

A   CASE   OF   CONSERVATION 

ur  hunger  for  clams  and  their  pre- 
sent scarcity  have  not  been  the 
chief  factors  in  the  new  national 
movement  for  the  conservation  of 
our  natural  resources ;  nor  are  the 
soaring  prices  of  pork  and  lumber  and  wheat 
immediate  causes,  although  they  have  served  to 
give  point  and  application  to  the  movement. 
Ours  is  still  a  lavishly  rich  country.  We  have 
long  had  a  greed  for  land,  but  we  have  not  felt 
a  pang  yet  of  the  Old  World's  land-hunger. 
Thousands  of  acres,  the  stay  for  thousands  of  hu- 
man lives,  are  still  lying  as  waste  places  on  the 
very  borders  of  our  eastern  cities.  There  is  plenty 
of  land  yet,  plenty  of  lumber,  plenty  of  food,  but 
there  is  a  very  great  and  growing  scarcity  of 
clams. 

Of  course  the  clam  might  vanish  utterly  from 
the  earth  and  be  forgotten ;  our  memory  of  its 
juicy,  salty,  sea-fat  flavor  might  vanish  with  it ; 


196     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

and  we,  ignorant  of  our  loss,  be  none  the  poorer. 
We  should  live  on,  —  the  eyeless  fish  in  the 
Mammoth  Cave  live  on,  —  but  life,  neverthe- 
less, would  not  be  so  well  worth  living.  For  it 
would  be  flatter,  with  less  of  wave-wet  freshness 
and  briny  gusto.  No  kitchen-mixed  seasoning 
can  supply  the  wild,  natural  flavors  of  life;  no 
factory-made  sensations  the  joy  of  being  the  nor- 
mal, elemental,  primitive  animal  that  we  are. 

The  clam  is  one  of  the  natural  flavors  of  life, 
and  no  longer  ago  than  when  I  was  a  freshman 
was  considered  one  of  life's  necessities.  Part  of 
the  ceremony  of  my  admission  to  college  was  a 
clambake  down  the  Providence  River  —  such  a 
clambake  as  never  was  down  any  other  river, 
and  as  never  shall  be  again  down  the  Providence 
River,  unless  the  Rhode  Island  clam-diggers  take 
up  their  barren  flats  and  begin  to  grow  clams. 

This  they  will  do ;  our  new  and  general  alarm 
would  assure  us  of  that,  even  if  the  Massachu- 
setts clam-diggers  were  not  leading  the  way.  But 
Rhode  Island  already  has  one  thriving  clam 
farm  of  her  own  at  Rumstick  Point  along  the 
Narragansett.  The  clam  shall  not  perish  from  our 
tidal  flats.  Gone  from  long  reaches  where  once  it 


THE  CLAM   FARM  197 

was  abundant,  small  and  scattering  in  its  present 
scanty  beds,  the  clam  (the  long-neck  clam)  shall 
again  flourish,  and  all  of  New  England  shall  again 
rejoice  and  be  glad. 

We  are  beginning,  as  a  nation,  while  still  the 
years  are  fat  with  plenty,  to  be  troubled  lest 
those  of  the  future  come  hungry  and  lean.  Up 
to  the  present  time  our  industrial  ethics  have 
been  like  our  evangelical  religion,  intensely,  nar- 
rowly individualistic,  —  my  salvation  at  all  costs. 
44  Dress-goods,  yarns,  and  tops  "  has  been  our  in- 
dustrial hymn  and  prayer.  And  religiously,  even 
yet,  I  sing  of  my  own  salvation  :  — 

While  in  this  region  here  below, 
No  other  good  will  I  pursue  : 
I  '11  bid  this  world  of  noise  and  show, 
With  all  its  glittering  snares,  adieu  ; 

A  most  un-Christian  sentiment  truly,  and  all  too 
common  in  both  religion  and  business,  yet  far  from 
representing,  to-day,  the  guiding  spirit  of  either 
business  or  religion.  For  the  growing  conception 
of  human  brotherhood  is  mightily  expanding  our 
narrow  religious  selfishness;  and  the  dawning  re- 
velation of  industrial  solidarity  is  not  only  mak- 
ing men  careful  for  the  present  prosperity  of  the 


198     THE   FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

ends  of  the  earth,  but  is  making  them  concerned 
also  for  the  future  prosperity  of  the  Farther-Off. 

Priests  and  prophets  we  have  had  heretofore. 
"Woodman,  woodman,  spare  that  tree,"  they 
have  wailed.  And  the  flying  chips  were  the 
woodman's  swift  response.  The  woodman  has 
not  heard  the  poet's  prayer.  But  he  is  hearing 
the  American  public's  command  to  let  the  sap- 
ling alone ;  and  he  is  beginning  to  heed.  It  is  a 
new  appeal,  this  for  the  sapling;  there  is  sound 
scientific  sense  in  it,  and  good  business  sense,  too. 
We  shall  save  our  forests,  our  watersheds,  and 
rivers ;  we  shall  conserve  for  time  to  come  our 
ores  and  rich  deposits ;  we  shall  reclaim  the  last 
of  our  western  deserts,  adopt  the  most  forlorn  of 
our  eastern  farms ;  we  shall  herd  our  whales  of 
the  Atlantic,  our  seals  of  the  Pacific,  number  and 
multiply  our  truant  schools  of  mackerel  that 
range  the  waters  of  the  sea;  just  as  we  shall  re- 
stock with  clams  the  waste,  sandy  shores  of  the 
sea,  shores  which  in  the  days  of  Massasoit  were 
as  fruitful  as  Eden,  but  which  through  years  of 
digging  and  no  planting  have  become  as  barren 
as  the  bloodless  sands  of  the  Sahara. 

It  is  a  solemn  saying  that  one  will  reap,  in  the 


THE   CLAM    FARM  199 

course  of  time,  what  one  sows  —  even  clams  if 
one  sows  clams;  but  it  is  a  more  solemn  saying 
that  one  shall  cease  to  reap,  after  a  time,  and  tor 
all  eternity,  what  one  has  not  sown  —  even  clams 
out  of  the  exhausted  flats  of  the  New  England 
coast,  and  the  sandy  shores  of  her  rivers  that  run 
brackish  to  the  sea. 

Hitherto  we  have  reaped  where  we  have  not 
sown,  and  gathered  where  we  have  not  strawed. 
But  that  was  during  the  days  of  our  industrial 
pilgrimage.  Now  our  way  no  longer  threads  the 
wilderness,  where  manna  and  quails  and  clams 
are  to  be  had  fresh  for  the  gathering.  Only  bar- 
berries, in  my  half-wild  uplands,  are  to  be  had 
nowadays  for  the  gathering.  There  are  still  enough 
barberries  to  go  round  without  planting  or  tres- 
passing, for  the  simple,  serious  reason  that  the 
barberries  do  not  carry  their  sugar  on  their 
bushes  with  them,  as  the  clams  carry  their  salt. 
The  Sugar  Trust  carries  the  barberries'  sugar. 
But  soon  or  late  every  member  of  that  trust  shall 
leave  his  bag  of  sweet  outside  the  gate  of  Eden  or 
the  Tombs.  Let  him  hasten  to  drop  it  now,  lest 
once  inside  he  find  no  manner  of  fruit,  for  his 
eternal  feeding,  but  barberries ! 


200     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

We  have  not  sown  the  clam  hitherto :  we 
have  only  digged ;  so  that  now,  for  all  practical 
purposes,  that  is  to  say,  for  the  old-time,  twenty- 
five-cent,  rock-weed  clambake,  the  native,  un- 
cultivated clam  has  had  its  day;  as  the  unenter- 
prising, unbelieving  clammers  themselves  are 
beginning  to  see. 

The  Providence  River  fishermen  are  seeking 
distant  flats  for  the  matchless  Providence  River 
clams,  bringing  them  overland  from  afar  by  train. 
So,  too,  in  Massachusetts,  the  distinguished  Dux- 
bury  clams  come  out  of  flats  that  reach  all  the 
way  from  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Johns,  on  the 
down-east  coast,  to  the  beds  of  the  Chesapeake. 
And  this,  while  eight  hundred  acres  of  superb 
clam-lands  lie  barren  in  Duxbury  town,  which 
might  be  producing  yearly,  for  the  joy  of  man, 
eighty  thousand  bushels  of  real  Duxbury  clams ! 

What  a  clambake  Duxbury  does  not  have 
each  year!  A  multitude  of  twice  eighty  thousand 
might  sit  down  about  the  steaming  stones  and  be 
filled.  The  thought  undoes  one.  And  all  the  more, 
that  Duxbury  does  not  hunger  thus  alone.  For  this 
is  the  story  of  fifty  other  towns  in  Massachu- 
setts, from  Salisbury  down  around  the  Cape  to 


THE  CLAM   FARM  201 

Dighton  —  a  tale  with  a  minus  total  of  over  two 
million  bushels  of  clams,  and  an  annual  minus 
of  nearly  two  millions  of  dollars  to  the  clammers. 
Nor  is  this  the  story  of  Massachusetts  alone, 
nor  of  the  tide-flats  alone.  It  is  the  story  of  the 
whole  of  New  England,  inland  as  well  as  coast. 
The  New  England  farm  was  cleared,  worked, 
exhausted,  and  abandoned.  The  farmer  was  as 
exhausted  as  his  farm,  and  preferring  the  hazard 
of  new  fortunes  to  the  certain  tragedy  of  the  old, 
went  West.  But  that  tale  is  told.  The  tide  from 
New  England  to  the  West  is  at  slack  ebb.  There 
is  still  a  stream  flowing  out  into  the  extreme 
West ;  rising  in  the  Middle  Western  States,  how- 
ever, not  in  the  East.  The  present  New  England 
farmers  are  staying  on  their  farms,  except  where 
the  city  buyer  wants  an  abandoned  farm,  and  in- 
sists upon  its  being  abandoned  at  any  price.  So 
will  the  clammer  stay  on  his  shore  acres,  for  his 
clams  shall  no  more  run  out,  causing  him  to  turn 
cod-fisher,  or  cranberry-picker,  or  to  make  worse 
shift.  The  New  England  clam-digger  of  to-day 
shall  be  a  clam-farmer  a  dozen  years  hence ;  and 
his  exhausted  acres  along  shore,  planted,  culti- 
vated, and  protected  by  law,  shall  yield  him  a 


202     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

good  living.  A  living  for  him  and  clams  for  us ; 
and  not  the  long-neck  clams  of  the  Providence 
River  and  Duxbury  flats  only :  they  shall  yield 
also  the  little-neck  clams  and  the  quahaug,  the 
scallop,  too,  the  oyster,  and,  from  farther  offshore, 
the  green-clawed  lobster  in  abundance,  and  of  a 
length  the  law  allows. 

Our  children's  children  may  run  short  of  coal 
and  kerosene;  but  they  need  never  want  for 
clams.  We  are  going  to  try  to  save  them  some 
coal,  for  there  are  mighty  bins  of  it  still  in  the 
earth,  while  here,  besides,  are  the  peat-bogs  — 
bunkers  of  fuel  beyond  the  fires  of  our  imagin- 
ations to  burn  up.  We  may,  who  knows?  save 
them  a  little  kerosene.  No  one  has  measured  the 
capacity  of  the  tank ;  it  has  been  tapped  only 
here  and  there ;  the  plant  that  manufactured  it, 
moreover,  is  still  in  operation,  and  is  doubtless 
making  more.  But  whether  so  or  not,  we  still 
may  trust  in  future  oil,  for  the  saving  spirit  of 
our  new  movement  watches  the  pipes  that  carry 
it  to  our  cans.  There  is  no  brand  of  economy 
known  to  us  at  present  that  is  more  assuring  than 
our  kerosene  economy.  The  Standard  Oil  Com- 
pany, begotten  by  Destiny,  it  would  seem,  as  dis- 


THE   CLAM    FARM  203 

tributor  of  oil,  is  not  one  to  burn  even  its  parat- 
flne  candles  at  both  ends.  There  was,  perhaps,  a 
wise  and  beneficent  Providence  in  its  organiza- 
tion, that  we  might  have  five  gallons  for  fifty-five 
cents  for  our  children's  sake  —  a  price  to  preserve 
the  precious  fluid  for  the  lamps  of  coming  gen- 
erations. 

But  should  the  coal  and  kerosene  give  out, 
the  clam,  I  say,  need  not.  The  making  of  Frank- 
lin coal  and  Standard  Oil,  like  the  making  of 
perfect  human  character,  may  be  a  process  re- 
quiring all  eternity,  —  longer  than  we  can  wait, 
—  so  that  the  present  deposits  may  some  time 
fail ;  whereas  the  clam  comes  to  perfection  within 
a  summer  or  two.  The  coal  is  a  dead  deposit; 
the  clam  is  like  the  herb,  yielding  seed,  and  the 
fruit  tree,  yielding  fruit  after  its  kind,  whose  seed 
is  in  itself  upon  the  earth.  All  that  the  clam  re- 
quires for  an  endless  and  an  abundant  existence 
is  planting  and  protection,  is  —  conservation. 

Except  for  my  doubts  about  a  real  North  Pole, 
my  wrath  at  the  Payne-Aldrich  Tariff,  my  dread- 
ful fears  at  the  vast  smallness  of  our  navy  (I 
have  a  Japanese  student  in  a  class  of  mine !), 
"  and  one  thing  more  that  may  not  be  "  (which, 


204     THE   FACE   OF  THE   FIELDS 

probably,  is  the  "  woman  question  "  or  the  round- 
ness of  the  "  Square  Deal ")  —  except,  I  say,  for 
a  few  of  such  things,  I  were  wholly  glad  that  my 
lines  have  fallen  unto  me  in  these  days,  when 
there  are  so  many  long-distant  movements  on 
foot ;  glad  though  I  can  only  sit  at  the  roadside 
and  watch  the  show  go  by.  I  can  applaud  from 
the  roadside.  I  can  watch  and  dream.  To  this 
procession  of  Conservators,  however  (and  to  the 
anti-tariff  crowd),  I  shall  join  myself,  shall  take  a 
hand  in  saving  things  by  helping  to  bury  every 
high  protectionist  and  planting  a  willow  sapling 
on  his  grave,  or  by  sowing  a  few  "  spats  "  in  a  gar- 
den of  clams.  For  here  in  the  opposite  direction 
moves  another  procession,  an  endless,  countless 
number  that  go  tramping  away  toward  the  desert 
Future  without  a  bag  of  needments  at  their  backs, 
without  a  staff  to  stay  them  in  their  hands. 

The  day  of  the  abandoned  farm  is  past;  the 
time  of  the  adopted,  of  the  adapted,  farm  has 
come.  We  are  not  going  to  abandon  anything 
any  more,  because  we  are  not  going  to  work  any- 
thing to  death  any  more.  We  shall  not  abandon 
even  the  empty  coal  mines  hereafter,  but  turn 
them  into  mushroom  cellars,  or  to  uses  yet  un- 


THE   CLAM    FARM  205 

dreamed.  We  have  found  a  way  to  utilize  the 
arid  land  of  the  West — a  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  acres  of  it  at  a  single  stroke,  as  Presi- 
dent Taft  turns  the  waters  of  the  Gunnison  River 
from  their  ancient  channel  into  a  man-made  tun- 
nel, and  sends  them  spreading  out 

Here  and  there, 

Everywhere, 
Till  his  waters  have  flooded  the  uttermost  creeks  and  the  low- 
lying  lanes, 
And  the  desert  is  meshed  with  a  million  veins,  — 

in  order  that  it  might  be  fulfilled,  which  was 
spoken  by  the  prophet,  saying,  "  The  wilderness 
and  the  solitary  place  shall  be  glad  for  them ; 
and  the  desert  shall  rejoice,  and  blossom  as  the 
rose." 

We  are  utilizing  these  arid  lands,  reclaiming 
the  desert  for  a  garden,  with  an  effort  of  hands 
and  a  daring  of  soul,  that  fall  hardly  short  of  the 
original  creative  work  which  made  the  world  — 
as  if  the  divine  fiat  had  been :  "  In  our  image, 
to  have  dominion;  to  subdue  the  earth;  and  to 
finish  the  work  we  leave  undone."  And  while  we 
are  finishing  these  acres  and  planting  them  with 
fruit  at  so  lavish  a  cost,  shall  we  continue  stupidly 


206     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

and  criminally  to  rob,  despoil,  and  leave  for  dead 
these  eleven  thousand  acres  of  natural  clam  gar- 
den on  the  Massachusetts  coast  %  If  a  vast  ir- 
rigating work  is  the  divine  in  man,  by  the  same 
token  are  the  barren  mountain  slopes,  the  polluted 
and  shrunken  rivers,  the  ravished  and  abandoned 
plough-lands,  and  these  lifeless  flats  of  the  shore 
the  devils  in  him — here  where  no  reclaiming  is 
necessary,  where  the  rain  cometh  down  from 
heaven,  and  twice  a  day  the  tides  flow  in  from  the 
hills  of  the  sea ! 

There  are  none  of  us  here  along  the  Atlantic 
coast  who  do  not  think  with  joy  of  that  two-hun- 
dred-and-fifty-thousand-acre  garden  new-made 
yonder  in  the  distant  West.  It  means  more,  and 
cheaper,  and  still  fairer  fruit  for  us  of  the  East ; 
more  musk-melons,  too,  we  hope;  but  we  know 
that  it  cannot  mean  more  clams.  Yet  the  clam, 
also,  is  good.  Man  cannot  live  on  irrigated  fruit 
alone.  He  craves  clams  —  clams  as  juicy  as  a 
Redlands  Bartlett,  but  fresh  with  the  salty  savor 
of  wind-blown  spray. 

And  he  shall  have  them,  for  the  clam  farm  — 
the  restocked,  restored  flat  of  earlier  times — has 
passed  the  stage  of  theory  and  experiment,  being 


THE   CLAM    FARM  207 

now  in  operation  on  the  New  England  shore,  a 
producing  and  very  paying  property. 

The  clam  farm  is  not  strictly  a  new  venture, 
however,  but  up  to  the  present  it  has  been  a 
failure,  because,  in  the  first  place,  the  times  were 
not  ripe  for  it;  the  public  mind  lacked  the  neces- 
sary education.  Even  yet  the  state,  and  the  local 
town  authorities,  give  the  clam-farmer  no  protec- 
tion. He  can  obtain  the  state's  written  grant  to 
plant  the  land  to  clams,  but  he  can  get  no  legal 
protection  against  his  neighbor's  digging  the 
clams  he  plants.  And  the  farm  has  failed,  because, 
in  the  second  place,  the  clam-farmer  has  lacked 
the  necessary  energy  and  imagination.  A  man 
who  for  years  has  made  his  bread  and  butter  and 
rubber  boots  out  of  land  belonging  to  everybody 
and  to  nobody,  by  simply  digging  in  it,  is  the  last 
man  to  build  a  fence  about  a  piece  of  land  and 
work  it.  Digging  is  only  half  as  hard  as  "  work- 
ing " ;  besides,  in  promiscuous  digging  one  is 
getting  clams  that  one's  neighbor  might  have  got, 
and  there  is  something  better  than  mere  clams  in 
that. 

But  who  will  plant  and  wait  for  a  crop  that 
anybody,  when  one's  back  is  turned,  and,  indeed, 


208     THE   FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

when  one's  back  is  n't  turned,  can  harvest  as  his 
own?  Yet  this  the  fishing  laws  of  Massachusetts 
still  allow.  Twenty  years  ago,  in  1889,  grants 
were  made  for  clam  farms  in  and  around  the  town 
of  Essex,  but  no  legal  rights  were  given  with 
the  grants.  Any  native  of  Essex,  by  these  old 
barnacled  laws,  is  free  to  help  himself  to  clams 
from  any  town  flat.  Of  course  the  farm  failed. 

Meantime  the  cry  for  clams  has  grown  louder ; 
the  specialists  in  the  new  national  college  of  con- 
servators have  been  studying  the  subject ;  "  ex- 
tension courses,"  inter-flat  conventions,  and  lab- 
oratory demonstrations  have  been  had  up  and 
down  the  coast ;  and  as  a  result,  the  clam  farm  in 
Essex,  since  the  reissue  of  the  grants  in  1906,  has 
been  put  upon  a  hopeful,  upon  a  safe  and  paying 
basis. 

It  is  an  interesting  example  of  education,  —  a 
local  public  sentiment  refined  into  an  actual,  de- 
pendable public  conscience ;  in  this  case  largely 
through  the  efforts  of  a  state's  Fish  and  Game 
Commission,  whose  biologists,  working  with  the 
accuracy,  patience,  and  disinterestedness  of  the 
scientist,  and  with  the  practical  good  sense  of 
the  farmer,  made  their  trial  clam  gardens  pay, 


THE   CLAM    FARM  209 

demonstrating  convincingly  that  a  clam-flat  will 
respond  to  scientific  care  as  readily  and  as  profit- 
ably as  a  Danvers  onion-bed  or  the  cantaloupe 
fields  at  Rocky  Ford. 

This  must  be  the  direction  of  the  new  move- 
ment for  the  saving  of  our  natural  resources  — 
this  roundabout  road  of  education.  Few  laws  can 
be  enacted,  fewer  still  enforced,  without  the  help 
of  an  awakened  public  conscience;  and  a  pub- 
lic conscience,  for  legislative  purposes,  is  nothing 
more  than  a  thorough  understanding  of  the  facts. 
As  a  nation,  we  need  a  popular  and  a  thorough 
education  in  ornithology,  entomology,  forestry, 
and  farming,  and  in  the  science  and  morality 
of  corporation  rights  in  public  lands.  We  want 
sectionally,  by  belts  or  states,  a  scientific  training 
for  our  specialty,  as  the  shell-fish  farmer  of  the 
Massachusetts  coast  is  being  scientifically  trained 
in  clams.  These  state  biologists  have  brought  the 
clam  men  from  the  ends  of  the  shore  together; 
they  have  plotted  and  mapped  the  mollusk  terri- 
tory; they  have  made  a  science  of  clam-culture; 
they  have  made  an  industry  of  clam-digging;  and 
to  the  clam-digger  they  are  giving  dignity  and  a 
sense  of  security  that  make  him  respect  himself 


210     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

and  his  neighbor's  clams  —  this  last  item  being  a 
most  important  change  in  the  clam-farm  outlook. 

With  so  much  done,  the  next  work  —  framing 
new  laws  to  take  the  place  of  the  old  fishing  laws 
—  should  be  a  simple  matter.  Such  a  procedure 
will  be  slow,  yet  it  is  still  the  only  logical  and 
effective  one.  Let  the  clam-digger  know  that  he 
can  raise  clams;  let  New  England  know  that 
the  forests  on  her  mountains  must  be  saved,  and 
within  a  twelvemonth  the  necessary  bills  would 
be  passed.  So  with  the  birds,  the  fish,  the  coal 
of  Alaska,  and  every  other  asset  of  our  national 
wealth.  The  nation-wide  work  of  this  saving 
movement  will  first  be  educative,  even  by  way 
of  scandals  in  the  Cabinet.  We  shall  hasten  very 
slowly  to  Congress  and  the  legislatures  with  our 
laws.  The  clam-flat  is  typical  of  all  our  multitu- 
dinous wealth ;  the  clam-digger  is  typical  of  all  of 
us  who  cut,  or  mine,  or  reap,  or  take  our  livings, 
in  any  way,  directly  from  the  hands  of  Nature ; 
and  the  lesson  of  the  clam  farm  will  apply  the 
country  over. 

We  have  been  a  nation  of  wasters,  spoiled  and 
made  prodigal  by  over-easy  riches ;  we  have  de- 
manded our  inheritance  all  at  once,  spent  it,  and 


THE   CLAM    FARM 


21  I 


as  a  result  we  are  already  beginning  to  want  — 
at  least  for  clams.  At  this  moment  there  arc  not 
enough  clams  to  go  round,  so  that  the  market- 
man  sticks  the  end  of  a  rubber  hose  into  his  tub 
of  dark,  salty,  fresh-shucked  clams,  and  soaks 
them;  soaks  them  with  fresh  water  out  of  rusty 
iron  pipes,  soaks  them,  and  swells  them,  whitens 
them,  bloats  them,  sells  them  —  ghastly  corpses, 
husks,  that  we  would  fain  fill  our  soup-bowls 
with ;  for  we  are  hungry,  and  must  be  fed,  and 
there  are  not  enough  of  the  unsoaked  clams  for 
a  bowl  around. 

But  there  shall  be.  With  the  coming  of  the 
clam  farm  there  shall  be  clams  enough,  and  oysters 
and  scallops;  for  the  whole  mollusk  industry,  in 
every  flat  and  bar  and  cove  of  the  country,  shall 
take  to  itself  a  new  interest,  and  vastly  larger  pro- 
portions. Then  shall  a  measure  of  scallops  be  sold 
for  a  quarter,  and  two  measures  of  clams  for  a 
quarter,  and  nothing,  any  more,  be  soaked. 

For  there  is  nothing  difficult  about  growing 
clams,  nothing  half  so  difficult  and  expensive  as 
growing  corn  or  cabbage.  In  fact,  the  clam  form 
offers  most  remarkable  opportunities,  although  the 
bid,  it  must  be  confessed,  is  pretty  plainly  to  one's 


212     THE   FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

love  of  ease  and  one's  willing  dependence.  To  be- 
gin with,  the  clam  farm  is  self- working,  ploughed, 
harrowed,  rolled,  and  fertilized  by  the  tides  of  the 
sea;  the  farmer  only  sowing  the  seed  and  digging 
the  crop.  Sometimes  even  the  seed  is  sown  for 
him  by  the  hands  of  the  tide ;  but  only  on  those 
flats  that  lie  close  to  some  natural  breeding-bar, 
where  the  currents,  gathering  up  the  tiny  floating 
"spats,"  and  carrying  them  swiftly  on  the  flood, 
broadcast  them  over  the  sand  as  the  tide  recedes. 
While  this  cannot  happen  generally,  still  the 
clam-farmer  has  a  second  distinct  advantage  in 
having  his  seed,  if  not  actually  sown  for  him,  at 
least  grown,  and  caught  for  him  on  these  natural 
breeding-bars,  in  such  quantities  that  he  need  only 
sweep  it  up  and  cradle  it,  as  he  might  winnow 
grain  from  a  threshing  floor.  In  Plum  Island 
Sound  there  is  such  a  bar,  where  it  seems  that 
Nature,  in  expectation  of  the  coming  clam  farm, 
had  arranged  the  soil  of  the  bar  and  the  tidal  cur- 
rents for  a  natural  set  of  clam-spats  to  supply  the 
entire  state  with  its  yearly  stock  of  seed. 

With  all  of  this  there  is  little  of  romance  about 
a  clam  farm,  and  nothing  at  all  spectacular  about 
its  financial  returns.  For  clams  are  clams,  whereas 


THE   CLAM    FARM  213 

cobalt  and  rubber  and  wheat,  and  even  squabs 
and  ginseng  roots,  are  different,  —  according  to 
the  advertisements.  The  inducements  of  the  clam 
farm  are  not  sufficient  to  cause  the  prosperous 
Middle-West  farmer  to  sell  out  and  come  East, 
as  he  has  been  selling  out  and  going  on  to  the 
farther  West,  for  its  larger,  cheaper  firms,  and 
bigger  crops.  Farming,  mining,  lumbering,  what- 
ever we  have  had  to  do,  in  fact,  directly  with  Na- 
ture, has  been  for  us,  thus  far,  a  speculation  and  a 
gamble.  Earnings  have  been  out  of  all  proportion 
to  investments,  excessive,  abnormal.  We  do  not 
earn,  we  strike  it  rich ;  and  we  have  struck  it  rich 
so  long  in  this  vast  rich  land,  that  the  strike  has 
lost  its  element  of  luck,  being  now  the  expected 
thing,  which,  failing  to  happen,  we  sell  out  and 
move  on  to  the  farthest  West,  where  there  is  still 
a  land  of  chance.  But  that  land  is  passing,  and 
with  it  is  passing  the  lucky  strike.  The  day  is 
approaching  when  a  man  will  pay  for  a  western 
farm  what  he  now  pays  for  an  eastern  farm  —  the 
actual  market  value,  based  upon  what  the  land, 
in  expert  hands,  can  be  made  yearly  to  yield. 
Values  will  rise  to  an  even,  normal  level;  earn- 
ings will  settle  to  the  same  level;  and  the  clam 


2i4     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

farm  of  the  coast  and  the  stock  farm  of  the  prairie 
will  yield  alike  — a  living;  and  if,  when  that  day- 
comes,  there  is  no  more  "Promised  Land"  for 
the  American,  it  will  be  because  we  have  crossed 
over,  and  possessed  the  land,  and  divided  it  among 
us  for  an  inheritance. 

When  life  shall  mean  a  living,  and  not  a 
dress-parade,  or  an  automobile,  or  a  flying-ma- 
chine, then  the  clam  farm,  with  its  two  or  three 
acres  of  flats,  will  be  farm  enough,  and  its  aver- 
age maximum  yield,  of  four  hundred  and  fifty 
dollars  an  acre,  will  be  profits  enough.  For  the 
clammer's  outfit  is  simple,  —  a  small  boat,  two 
clam-diggers,  four  clam-baskets,  and  his  hip- 
boots,  the  total  costing  thirty  dollars. 

The  old  milk  farm  here  under  the  hill  below 
me,  with  its  tumbling  barn  and  its  ninety  acres 
of  desolation,  was  sold  not  long  ago  for  six  thou- 
sand dollars.  The  milkman  will  make  more 
money  than  the  clam  man,  but  he  will  have  no 
more.  The  milk  farm  is  a  larger  undertaking, 
calling  for  a  larger  type  of  man,  and  developing 
larger  qualities  of  soul,  perhaps,  than  could  ever 
be  dug  up  with  a  piddling  clam-hoe  out  of  the 
soft  sea-fattened  flats.  But  that  is  a  question  of 


THE   CLAM    FARM  215 

men,  not  of  farms.  We  must  have  clams;  some- 
body must  dig  clams;  and  matters  of  the  spirit 
all  aside,  reckoned  simply  as  a  small  bus 
clam-farming  offers  a  sure  living,  a  free,  inde- 
pendent, healthful,  outdoor  living  —  and  hence 
an  ample  living  —  to  thousands  of  men  who  may 
lack  the  capital,  or  the  capabilities,  or,  indeed, 
the  time  for  the  larger  undertakings.  And  viewed 
as  the  least  part  of  the  coming  shell-fish  industry, 
and  this  in  turn  as  a  smallest  part  of  the  coming 
national  industry,  due  to  our  reclaiming,  restock- 
ing, and  conserving,  and  wise  leasing,  the  clam 
farm  becomes  a  type,  a  promise ;  it  becomes  the 
shore  of  a  new  country,  a  larger,  richer,  longer- 
lasting  country  than  our  pioneer  fathers  found 
here. 

For  behold  the  clam  crop  how  it  grows  !  — 
precisely  like  any  other  crop,  in  the  summer,  or 
more  exactly,  from  about  the  first  of  May  to  the 
first  of  December;  and  the  growth  is  very  rapid, 
a  seed-clam  an  inch  long  at  the  May  planting, 
developing  in  some  localities  (as  in  the  Essex 
and  Ipswich  rivers)  into  a  marketable  clam,  three 
inches  long  by  December.  This  is  an  increase 
in  volume  of  about  nine  hundred  percent.  The 


216     THE   FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

little  spats,  scattered  broadcast  over  the  flat,  bur- 
row with  the  first  tide  into  the  sand,  where  with 
each  returning  tide  they  open  their  mouths,  like 
young  birds,  for  their  meal  of  diatoms  brought 
in  by  the  never-failing  sea.  Thus  they  feed  twice 
a  day,  with  never  too  much  water,  with  never  a 
fear  of  drouth,  until  they  are  grown  fat  for  the 
clammer's  basket. 

If,  heretofore,  John  Burroughs  among  the  un- 
certainties of  his  vineyard  could  sing, — 
Serene,  I  fold  my  hands  and  wait,  — 

surely  now  the  clammer  in  his  cottage  by  the  sea 
can  sing,  and  all  of  us  with  him,  — 

The  stars  come  nightly  to  the  sky; 

The  tidal  wave  comes  to  the  sea ; 
Nor  time,  nor  space,  nor  deep,  nor  high, 

Can  keep  my  own  away  from  me. 


IX 

THE    COMMUTER'S    THANKSGIVING 


THE    COMMUTER'S    THANKSGIVING 

,he  cottages  are  closed;  the  summer 
people  have  gone  back  to  the  city; 
only  the  farmers  and  the  commu- 
ters—  barnacled  folk  —  remain  as 
the  summer  tide  recedes,  fixed  to 
the  rocks  of  winter  because  they  have  grown  fast. 
To  live  is  to  have  two  houses:  a  country  house 
for  the  summer,  a  city  house  for  the  winter ;  to 
close  one,  and  open  the  other;  to  change,  to  flit ! 
How  different  it  used  to  be  when  I  was  a  boy 
—  away  yonder  in  the  days  of  farms  and  old- 
fashioned  homes  and  old-time  winters !  Things 
were  prepared  for,  were  made  something  of, 
and  enjoyed  in  those  days  —  the  "  quiltings,"  the 
"  raisings,"  the  Thanksgivings !  What  getting 
ready  there  used  to  be  —  especially  for  the  win- 
ter !  for  what  was  n't  there  to  get  ready !  and  how 
much  of  everything  to  get  ready  there  used  to  be  ! 
It  began  along  in  late  October,  continuing  with 
more  speed  as  the  days  shortened  and  hurried  us 
into  November.  It  must  all  be  done  by  Thanks- 


220    THE  FACE   OF  THE  FIELDS 

giving  Day  —  everything  brought  in,  everything 
housed  and  battened  down  tight.  The  gray  low- 
ering clouds,  the  cold  snap,  the  first  flurry  of 
snow,  how  they  hastened  and  heartened  the  work  ! 
Thanksgiving  found  us  ready  for  winter,  indoors 
and  out. 

The  hay-mows  were  full  to  the  beams  where 
the  swallows  built;  the  north  and  west  sides  of 
the  barnyard  were  flanked  with  a  deep  wind-break 
of  corn-fodder  that  ran  on  down  the  old  worm- 
fence  each  side  of  the  lane  in  yellow  zigzag  walls ; 
the  big  wooden  pump  under  the  turn-o'-lane  tree 
by  the  barn  was  bundled  up  and  buttoned  to 
the  tip  of  its  dripping  nose  ;  the  bees  by  the  cur- 
rant bushes  were  double-hived,  the  strawberries 
mulched,  the  wood  all  split  and  piled,  the  cellar 
windows  packed,  and  the  storm-doors  put  on. 
The  very  cows  had  put  on  an  extra  coat,  and 
turned  their  collars  up  about  their  ears ;  the  tur- 
keys had  changed  their  roost  from  the  ridge-pole 
of  the  corn-crib  to  the  pearmain  tree  on  the  sunny 
side  of  the  wagon-house ;  the  squirrels  had  fin- 
ished their  bulky  nests  in  the  oaks ;  the  muskrats 
of  the  lower  pasture  had  completed  their  lodges; 
the  whole  farm  —  house,  barn,  fields,  and  wood- 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING     221 

lot  —  had  shuffled  into  its  greatcoat,  its   n. 
and  muffetees,  and  settled  comfortably  down  foi 
the  winter. 

The  old  farmhouse  was  an  invitation  to  winter. 
It  looked  itsjoy  atthe  prospect  ofthecoming  cold 
Low,  weather-worn,  mossy-shingled,  secluded  in 
its  wayward  garden  of  box  and  bleeding-hearts, 
sheltered  by  its  tall  pines,  grape-vined,  hop-vined, 
clung  to  by  creeper  and  honeysuckle,  it  stood 
where  the  roads  divided,  halfway  between  every- 
where, unpainted,  unpretentious,  as  much  a  part 
of  the  landscape  as  the  muskrat-lodge;  and,  like 
the/  lodge,  roomy,  warm,  and  hospitable. 

Round  at  the  back,  under  the  wide,  open  shed, 
a  door  led  into  the  kitchen,  another  led  into  the 
living-room,  another  into  the  storeroom,  and  two 
big,  slanting  double-doors,  scoured  and  slippery 
with  four  generations  of  sliders,  covered  the  cav- 
ernous way  into  the  cellar.  But  they  let  the  smell 
of  apples  up,  as  the  garret  door  let  the  smell  of 
sage  and  thyme  come  down;  while  from  the 
door  of  the  storeroom,  mingling  with  the  odor  of 
apples  and  herbs,  filling  the  whole  house  and 
all  my  early  memories,  came  the  smell  ot  broom- 
corn,  came  the  sound  of  grandfather's  loom. 


222     THE   FACE   OF  THE   FIELDS 

Behind  the  stove  in  the  kitchen,  fresh-papered 
like  the  walls,  stood  the  sweet-potato  box  (a  sweet 
potato  must  be  kept  dry  and  wafm),  an  ample, 
ten-barrel  box,  full  of  Jersey  sweets  that  were 
sweet,  —  long,  golden,  syrupy  potatoes,  grown 
in  the  warm  sandy  soil  of  the  "  Jethro  Piece." 
Against  the  box  stood  the  sea-chest,  fresh  with 
the  same  paper  and  piled  with  wood.  There  was 
another  such  chest  in  the  living-room  near  the 
old  fireplace,  and  still  another  in  grandfather's 
work-room  behind  the  "tem-plate"  stove. 

But  wood  and  warmth  and  sweet  smells  were 
not  all.  There  was  music  also,  the  music  of  life, 
of  young  life  and  of  old  life  —  grandparents, 
grandchildren  (about  twenty-eight  of  the  latter). 
There  were  seven  of  us  alone  —  a  girl  at  each 
end  of  the  seven  and  one  in  the  middle,  which  is 
Heaven's  own  mystic  number  and  divine  arrange- 
ment. Thanksgiving  always  found  us  all  at  grand- 
father's and  brimming  full  of  thanks. 

That,  of  course,  was  long,  long  ago.  Things 
are  different  nowadays.  There  are  as  many  grand- 
fathers, I  suppose,  as  ever;  but  they  don't  make 
brooms  in  the  winter  any  more,  and  live  on  farms. 
They  live  in  flats.  The  old  farm  with  its  open 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVIN   i 

acres  has  become  a  city  street;  the  generout 
farmhouse  has  become  a  speaking-tube,  kitchen- 
ette and  bath  —  all  the  "modern  convenient 
the  cows  have  evaporated  into  convenient  cai 
condensed  "  milk  " ;  the  ten-barrel  box  of  potatoes 
has  changed  into  a  convenient  ten-pound  bag,  the 
wood-pile  into  a  convenient  five-cent  bundle  of 
blocks  tied  up  with  a  tarred  string,  the  fireplace 
into  a  convenient  moss-and-flame-painted  gas-log, 
the  seven  children  into  one,  or  none,  or  into  a 
convenient  bull-terrier  pup.    Still,  we  may  give 
thanks,  for  convenient  as  life  has  become  to-day, 
it  has  not  yet  all  gone  to  the  dogs. 

It  is  true,  however,  that  there  might  be  fewer 
dogs  and  more  children,  possibly ;  fewer  flats  and 
more  farms ;  less  canned  milk  (or  whatever  the 
paste  is)  and  more  real  cream.  Surely  we  might 
buy  less  and  raise  more,  hire  less  and  make  more, 
travel  less  and  see  more,  hear  less  and  think  more. 
Life  might  be  quieter  for  some  of  us ;  profoumler, 
perhaps,  for  others  of  us,  —  more  inconvenient 
indeed,  for  all  of  us,  and  yet  a  thing  to  be  thank- 
ful for] 

It  might,  but  most  of  us  doubt  it.  It  is  not  tor 
the  things  we  possess,  but  only  for  the  things  we 


224     THE  FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

have  not,  for  the  things  we  are  relieved  of,  the 
things  we  escape,  —  for  our  conveniences,  —  that 
we  are  thankful  nowadays.  Life  is  summed  up 
with  us  in  negations.  We  tally  our  conveniences 
only,  quick-detachable-tired,  six-cylindered,  sev- 
enty-horse-powered conveniences.  To  construct 
eighteen-million  dollars'  worth  of  destruction  in 
the  shape  of  a  gunboat !  to  lay  out  a  beautiful 
road  and  then  build  a  machine  to  "  eat  it " !  to 
be  allotted  a  span  of  time  and  study  how  to  an- 
nihilate it !  O  Lord,  we  thank  Thee  that  we  have 
all  the  modern  conveniences,  from  cucumbers  at 
Christmas  to  a  Celestial  Creche  !  Heaven  is  such  a 
nice,  fit,  convenient  place  for  our  unborn  children  ! 
God  is  their  home.  The  angels  take  such  gentle 
care  of  them  !  Besides,  they  are  not  so  in  the  way 
there ;  and,  if  need  be,  we  have  the  charity  chil- 
dren and  other  people's  children ;  or  we  have  the 
darling  little  sweet-faced  bull-terrier  pup. 

For  myself,  I  have  never  had  a  little  cherub- 
faced  bull-pup,  but  at  this  present  writing  I  am 
helping  to  bring  up  our  fourth  baby,  and  I  think 
I  see  the  convenience  of  the  pup.  And  I  am  only 
the  father  of  the  baby  at  that ! 

To  begin  with,  you  can  buy  a  pup.   You  can 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING    225 

send  the  stable-man  after  it.  But  not  a  baby.  Nor 
even  the  doctor  can  fetch  it.  The  mother  must  p  1 
herself  after  her  baby — to  Heaven  it  maybe; 
but  she  will  carry  it  all  the  way  through  Hell  1><  - 
fore  she  brings  it  to  the  earth,  this  earth  of  sunlit 
fields  and  stormy  skies,  so  evidently  designed  to 
make  men  of  babies.  A  long  perilous  journey 
this,  across  a  whole  social  season. 

Certainly  the  little  dog  is  a  great  convenience, 
and  as  certainly  he  is  a  great  negation,  —  the  sub- 
stitution, as  with  most  conveniences,  of  a  thing 
for  a  self. 

Our  birth  may  be  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting, 
but  life  immediately  after  is  largely  an  inconven- 
ience. That  is  the  meaning  of  an  infant's  first 
strangling  wail.  He  is  protesting  against  the  in- 
convenience of  breathing.  Breathing  is  an  incon- 
venience ;  eating  is  an  inconvenience ;  sleeping  is 
an  inconvenience  ;  praying  is  an  inconvenience  ; 
but  they  are  part  and  parcel  of  life,  and  nothing 
has  been  done  yet  to  relieve  the  situation,  except 
in  the  item  of  prayer.  From  prayer,  and  from  a 
multitude  of  other  inconveniences,  not  mentioned 
above,  that  round  out  life  (death  excepted),  we 
have  found  ways  of  escape  —  by  borrowing,  rent- 


226     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

ing,  hiring,  avoiding,  denying,  until  life,  which  is 
the  sum  of  all  inconveniences,  has  been  reduced 
to  its  infantile  nothingness  —  the  protest  against 
the  personal  effort  of  breathing  which  is  exist- 
ence. 

Not  so  for  the  Commuter.  He  is  compelled 
to  live.  I  have  been  reckoning  up  my  incon- 
veniences: the  things  that  I  possess;  the  things 
I  have  that  are  mine ;  not  rented,  borrowed,  hired, 
avoided,  but  claimed,  performed,  made,  owned; 
that  I  am  burdened  with,  responsible  for ;  that  re- 
quire my  time  and  my  hands.  And  I  find  that,  for 
a  fairly  full  life  there  are  inconveniences  enough 
incidental  to  commuting. 

To  begin  with,  there  is  the  place  of  the  Com- 
muter's home.  Home  *?  Yes,  no  doubt,  he  has  a 
home,  but  where  is  it?  Can  Heaven,  besides  the 
Commuter,  find  out  the  way  there  *? 

You  are  standing  with  your  question  at  the  en- 
trance of  the  great  terminal  station  as  the  wintry 
day  and  the  city  are  closing,  and  it  is  small  won- 
der that  you  ask  if  God  knows  whither,  over  the 
maze  of  tracks  reaching  out  into  the  night,  each 
of  this  commuting  multitude  is  going.  But  follow 
one,  any  one  of  the  bundled  throng —  this  one, 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING     227 

this  tired,  fine-faced  Scotchman  of  fifty  years 
whom  we  chanced  to  see  during  the  day  selling 
silks  behind  the  counter  of  a  department  store. 

It  is  a  chill  November  evening,  with  the  mea- 
gre twilight  already  spent.  Our  Commuter  has 
boarded  a  train  for  a  nineteen-mile  ride  ;  then  an 
electric  car  for  five  miles  more,  when  he  gets  off, 
under  a  lone  electric  light,  swinging  amid  the 
skeleton  limbs  of  forest  trees.  We  follow  him, 
now  on  foot,  down  a  road  dark  with  night  and 
overhanging  pines,  on  past  a  light  in  a  barn,  and 
on  —  when  a  dog  barks,  a  horse  whinnies,  a  lan- 
tern flares  suddenly  into  the  road  and  comes  pat- 
tering down  at  us,  calling,  "Father!  father!" 

We  stop  at  the  gate  as  father  and  daughter  en- 
ter the  glowing  kitchen.  A  moment  later  we  hear 
a  cheerful  voice  greeting  the  horse,  and  then,  had 
we  gone  closer  to  the  barn,  we  might  have  heard 
the  creamy  tinkle  of  milk,  spattering  warm  into 
the  bottom  of  the  tin  pail. 

Heaven  knew  whither,  over  the  reaching  rails, 
this  tired  seller  of  silks  was  going.  Heaven  was 
there  awaiting  him.  The  yard-stick  was  laid  down 
at  half-past  five  o'clock;  at  half:past  six  by  the 
clock  the  Commuter  was  far  away,  farther  than 


228     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

the  other  side  of  the  world,  in  his  own  small  barn 
where  they  neither  sell  silk,  nor  buy  it,  but  where 
they  have  a  loft  full  of  fragrant  meadow  hay,  and 
keep  a  cow,  and  eat  their  oatmeal  porridge  with 
cream. 

It  is  an  inconvenient  world,  this  distant,  dark- 
ened, unmapped  country  of  the  Commuter.  Only 
God  and  the  Commuter  know  how  to  get  there, 
and  they  alone  know  why  they  stay.  But  there 
are  reasons,  good  and  sufficient  reasons  —  there 
are  inconveniences,  I  should  say,  many  and  com- 
pelling inconveniences,  such  as  wife  and  children, 
miles  in,  miles  out,  the  isolation,  the  chores,  the 
bundles  —  loads  of  bundles  —  that  keep  the  Com- 
muter commuting.  Once  a  commuter,  always  a 
commuter,  because  there  is  no  place  along  the 
road,  either  way,  where  he  can  put  his  bundles 
down. 

Bundles,  and  miles  in,  and  miles  out,  and  iso- 
lation, and  children,  and  chores?  I  will  count 
them  all. 

The  bundles  I  have  carried !  And  the  bundles 
I  have  yet  to  carry !  to  "tote  "  !  to  "tote  "  !  But 
is  it  all  of  life  to  be  free  from  bundles?  How,  in- 
deed, may  one  so  surely  know  that  one  has  a  hold 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING    229 

upon  life  as  when  one  has  it  done  into  a  bundle  ? 
Life  is  never  so  tangible,  never  so  compact  and 
satisfactory  as  while  still  wrapped  up  and  tied 
with  a  string.  One's  clothes,  to  take  a  single  ex- 
ample, as  one  bears  them  home  in  a  box,  are  an 
anticipation  and  a  pure  joy  —  the  very  clothes 
that,  the  next  day,  one  wears  as  a  matter  of  course, 
or  wears  with  disconcerting  self-consciousness,  or 
wears,  it  may  be,  with  physical  pain. 

Here  are  the  Commuter's  weary  miles.  Life  to 
everybody  is  a  good  deal  of  a  journey;  to  nobody 
so  little  of  a  journey,  however,  as  to  the  Com- 
muter, for  his  traveling  is  always  bringing  him 
home. 

And  as  to  his  isolation  and  his  chores  it  is  just 
the  same,  because  they  really  have  no  separate 
existence  save  in  the  urban  mind,  as  hydrogen 
and  oxygen  have  no  separate  existence  save  in 
the  corked  flasks  of  the  laboratory.  These  gases 
are  found  side  by  side  nowhere  in  nature.  Only 
water  is  to  be  found  free  in  the  clouds  and  springs 
and  seas  —  only  the  union  of  hydrogen  and  oxy- 
gen, because  it  is  part  of  the  being  of  these  two 
elements  to  combine.  So  is  it  the  nature  of  chores 
and  isolation  to  combine  —  into  water,  like  hydro- 


230     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

gen  and  oxygen,  into  a  well  of  water,  springing 
up  everlastingly  to  the  health,  the  contentment, 
and  to  the  self-sufficiency  of  the  Commuter. 

At  the  end  of  the  Commuter's  evening  journey, 
where  he  lays  his  bundles  down,  is  home,  which 
means  a  house,  not  a  latch-key  and  "  rooms  "  ;  a 
house,  I  say,  not  a  "floor,"  but  a  house  that  has 
foundations  and  a  roof,  that  has  an  outside  as  well 
as  inside,  that  has  shape,  character,  personality, 
for  the  reason  that  the  Commuter  and  not  a  Com- 
munity, lives  there.  Flats,  tenements,  "  chambers," 
"  apartments  "  —  what  are  they  but  public  build- 
ings, just  as  inns  and  hospitals  and  baths  are, 
where  you  pay  for  your  room  and  ice-water,  or  for 
your  cot  in  the  ward,  as  the  case  may  be  ?  And 
what  are  they  but  unmistakable  signs  of  a  rever- 
sion to  earlier  tribal  conditions,  when  not  only  the 
cave  was  shared  in  common,  but  the  wives  and  chil- 
dren and  the  day's  kill  ?  The  differences  between 
an  ancient  cliff-house  and  a  modern  flat  are  mere 
details  of  construction ;  life  in  the  two  would  have 
to  be  essentially  the  same,  with  odds,  particularly 
as  to  rooms  and  prospect,  in  favor  of  the  cliff- 
dweller. 

The  least  of  the  troubles  of  flatting  is  the  flat; 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING     231 

the  greatest  is  the  shaping  of  life  to  fit  the  flat, 
conforming,  and  sharing  one's  personality,  losing 
it  indeed!  I'll  commute  first!  The  only  thing 
I  possess  that  distinguishes  me  from  a  factory 
shoe-last  or  an  angel  of  heaven  is  my  personality. 
Shoe-lasts  are  known  by  sizes  and  styles,  angels 
by  ranks ;  but  a  man  is  known  by  what  he  is  n't, 
and  by  what  he  has  n't,  in  common  with  anybody 
else. 

One  must  commute,  if  one  would  live  in  a 
house,  and  have  a  home  of  one's  own,  and  a  per- 
sonality of  one's  own,  provided,  of  course,  that 
one  works  in  New  York  City  or  in  Boston  or 
Chicago;  and  provided,  further,  that  one  is  as 
poor  as  one  ought  to  be.  And  most  city  workers 
are  as  poor  as  they  ought  to  be  —  as  poor,  in 
other  words,  as  I  am. 

Poor !  Where  is  the  man  rich  enough  to  buy 
Central  Park  or  Boston  Common  ?  For  that  he 
must  needs  do  who  would  make  a  city  home  with 
anything  like  my  dooryard  and  sky  and  quiet. 
A  whole  house,  after  all,  is  only  the  beginning  of 
a  home ;  the  rest  of  it  is  dooryard  and  situation. 
A  house  is  for  the  body ;  a  home  for  body  and 
soul:  and  the  soul  needs  as  much  room  outside 


232     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

as  inside  the  house,  —  needs  a  garden  and  some 
domestic  animal  and  the  starry  vault  of  the 
sky. 

It  is  better  to  be  cramped  for  room  within  the 
house  than  without.  Yet  the  yard  need  not  be 
large,  certainly  not  a  farm,  nor  a  gentleman's  es- 
tate, nor  fourteen  acres  of  woodchucks,  such  as 
my  own.  Neither  can  it  be,  for  the  Commuter, 
something  abandoned  in  the  remote  foothills,  nor 
something  wanton,  like  a  brazen  piece  of  sea-sand 
"at  the  beach." 

The  yard  may  vary  in  size,  but  it  must  be  of 
soil,  clothed  upon  with  grass,  with  a  bush  or  a 
tree  in  it,  a  garden,  and  some  animal,  even  if  the 
tree  has  to  grow  in  the  garden  and  the  animal 
has  to  be  kept  in  the  tree,  as  with  one  of  my 
neighbors,  who  is  forced  to  keep  his  bees  in  his 
single  weeping  willow,  his  yard  not  being  large 
enough  for  his  house  and  his  hive.  A  bee  needs 
considerable  room. 

And  the  soul  of  the  Commuter  needs  room,  — 
craves  it,  —  but  not  mere  acres,  nor  plentitude 
of  things.  I  have  fourteen  acres,  and  they  are  too 
many.  Eight  of  them  are  in  woods  and  gypsy 
moths.    Besides,  at  this  writing,  I  have  one  cow, 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING    i33 

one  yearling  heifer,  one  lovely  calf,  with  nature 
conspiring  to  get  me  a  herd  of  cows ;  I  have  also 
ten  colonies  of  bees,  which  are  more  than  any 
Commuter  needs,  even  if  they  never  swarmed ; 
nor  does  he  need  so  many  coming  cows. 

But  with  only  one  cow,  and  only  one  colony 
of  bees,  and  only  one  acre  of  yard,  still  how  im- 
possibly inconvenient  the  life  of  the  Commuter 
is !  A  cow  is  truly  an  inconvenience  if  you  care 
for  her  yourself —  an  inherent,  constitutional,  un- 
exceptional inconvenience  are  cows  and  wives  if 
you  care  for  them  yourself.  A  hive  of  bees  is  an 
inconvenience ;  a  house  of  your  own  is  an  incon- 
venience, and,  according  to  the  figures  of  many 
of  my  business  friends,  an  unwarranted  luxury. 
It  is  cheaper  to  rent,  they  find.  M  Why  not  keep 
your  money  in  your  business,  where  you  can  turn 
it  %  "  they  argue.  "  Real  estate  is  a  poor  invest- 
ment generally,  —  so  hard  to  sell,  when  you  want 
to,  without  a  sacrifice." 

It  is  all  too  true.  The  house,  the  cow,  the 
children,  are  all  inconvenient.  I  can  buy  two 
quarts  of  blue  Holstein  milk  of  a  milkman, 
typhoid  and  scarlet-fever  germs  included,  with 
much  less  inconvenience  than  I  can  make  my 


234     THE   FACE  OF  THE   FIELDS 

yellow-skinned  Jersey  give  down  her  fourteen 
quarts  a  day.  I  can  live  in  a  rented  house  with 
less  inconvenience  than  in  this  house  of  my  own. 
I  am  always  free  to  go  away  from  a  rented  house, 
and  I  am  always  glad  to  go.  The  joy  of  renting 
is  to  move,  or  sublet;  to  be  rid  also  of  taxes  and 
repairs. 

"  Let  the  risers  rot !  It  is  n't  my  house,  and  if  I 
break  my  neck  I  '11  sue  for  damages ! " 

There  is  your  renter,  and  the  joy  he  gets  in 
renting. 

There  are  advantages,  certainly,  in  renting; 
your  children,  for  instance,  can  each  be  born  in  a 
different  house,  if  you  rent;  and  if  they  chance  to 
come  all  boys,  like  my  own,  they  can  grow  up 
at  the  City  Athletic  Association  —  a  convenient, 
and  more  or  less  permanent  place,  nowadays, 
which  may  answer  very  well  their  instinctive 
needs  for  a  fixed  abode,  for  a  home.  There  are 
other  advantages,  no  doubt.  But  however  you 
reckon  them,  the  rented  house  is  in  the  end  a 
tragedy,  as  the  willful  renter  and  his  homeless 
family  is  a  calamity,  a  disgrace,  a  national  men- 
ace. Drinking  and  renting  are  vicious  habits.(  A 
house  and  a  bit  of  land  of  your  own  are  as  neces- 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING    235 

sary  to  normal  living  as  fresh  air,  food,  a  clear 
conscience,  and  work  to  do. 

If  so,  then  the  question  is,  Where  shall  one 
make  his  home  ?  "  Where  shall  the  scholar 
live?"  asks  Longfellow;  "  In  solitude  or  in  so- 
ciety ?  In  the  green  stillness  of  the  country,  where 
he  can  hear  the  heart  of  Nature  beat,  or  in  the 
dark  gray  city,  where  he  can  feel  and  hear  the 
throbbing  heart  of  man?  I  make  answer  for  him, 
and  say,  In  the  dark,  gray  city." 

I  should  say  so,  too,  and  I  should  say  it  with- 
out so  much  oracular  solemnity.  The  city  for  the 
scholar.  He  needs  books,  and  they  do  not  grow 
in  cornfields.  The  pale  book-worm  is  a  city  worm, 
and  feeds  on  glue  and  dust  and  faded  ink.  The 
big  green  tomato-worm  lives  in  the  country.  But 
this  is  not  a  question  of  where  scholars  should 
live ;  it  is  where  men  should  live  and  their  children. 
Where  shall  a  man's  home  be  ?  Where  shall  he 
eat  his  supper  ?  Where  lay  him  down  to  sleep 
when  his  day's  work  is  done?  Where  find  his 
odd  job  and  spend  his  Sunday?  Where  shall  his 
children  keep  themselves  usefully  busy  and  find 
room  to  play  ?  Let  the  Commuter,  not  the  scholar, 
make  answer. 


236     THE   FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

The  Commuter  knows  the  dark  gray  city, 
knows  it  darker  and  grayer  than  the  scholar,  for 
the  Commuter  works  there,  shut  up  in  a  basement, 
or  in  an  elevator,  maybe,  six  days  a  week ;  he 
feels  and  hears  the  throbbing  heart  of  man  all  the 
day  long;  and  when  evening  comes  he  hurries 
away  to  the  open  country,  where  he  can  hear  the 
heart  of  Nature  beat,  where  he  can  listen  a  little  to 
the  beating  of  his  own. 

iWhere,  then,  should  a  man  live  %  I  will  make 
answer  only  for  myself,  and  say,  Here  in  Hing- 
ham,  right  where  I  am,  for  here  on  Mullein  Hill 
the  sky  is  round  and  large,  the  evening  and  the 
Sunday  silences  are  deep,  the  dooryards  are  wide, 
the  houses  are  single,  and  the  neighborhood  am- 
bitions are  good  kitchen-gardens,  good  gossip, 
fancy  chickens,  and  clean  paint,  j 

There  are  other  legitimate  ambitions,  and  the 
Commuter  is  not  without  them;  but  these  few  go 
far  toward  making  home  home,  toward  giving 
point  and  purpose  to  life,  and  a  pinch  of  pride. 

The  ideal  home  depends  very  much,  of  course, 
on  the  home  you  had  as  a  child.  I  can  think  of 
nothing  so  ideally  homelike  as  a  farm,  —  an  ideal 
farm,  ample,  bountiful,  peaceful,  with  the  smell 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING     237 

of  apples  coming  up  from  the  cellar,  and  the 
fragrance  of  herbs  and  broom-corn  haunting  store- 
room and  attic. 

The  day  is  past  when  every  man's  home  can 
be  his  farm,  dream  as  every  man  may  of  some- 
time having  such  a  home;  but  the  day  has  just 
arrived  when  every  man's  home  can  be  his  gar- 
den and  chicken-pen  and  dooryard,  with  room 
and  quiet  and  a  tree. 

The  day  has  come,  for  the  means  are  at  hand, 
when  life,  despite  its  present  centralization,  can 
be  more  as  it  used  to  be  —  spread  out,  roomier, 
simpler,  healthier,  more  nearly  normal,  because 
again  lived  near  to  the  soil.  It  is  time  that  every 
American  home  was  built  in  the  open  country, 
for  there  is  plenty  of  land  —  land  in  my  imme- 
diate neighborhood  for  a  hundred  homes  where 
children  can  romp,  and  your  neighbor's  hens,  too, 
and  the  inter-neighborhood  peace  brood  undis- 
turbed. And  such  a  neighborhood  need  not  be 
either  the  howling  wilderness,  where  the  fox  still 
yaps,  or  the  semi-submerged  suburban  village, 
where  every  house  has  its  Window-in-Thrunis. 
The  Commuter  cannot  live  in  the  wild  country, 
else  he  must  cease  to  commute;  and  as  for  small- 


238     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

village  life  —  I  suppose  it  might  be  worse.  It  is 
not  true  that  man  made  the  city,  that  God  made 
the  country,  and  that  the  devil  made  the  village 
in  between ;  but  it  is  pretty  nearly  true,  perhaps. 

But  the  Commuter,  it  must  be  remembered,  is 
a  social  creature,  especially  the  Commuter's  wife, 
and  no  near  kin  to  stumps  and  stars.  They  may 
do  to  companion  the  prophetic  soul,  not,  how- 
ever, the  average  Commuter,  for  he  is  common 
and  human,  and  needs  his  own  kind.  Any  scheme 
of  life  that  ignores  this  human  hankering  is  sure 
to  come  to  grief;  any  benevolent  plan  for  home- 
steading  the  city  poor  that  would  transfer  them 
from  the  garish  day  of  the  slums  to  the  sweet  soli- 
tudes of  unspoiled  nature  had  better  provide  them 
with  copies  of  "  The  Pleasures  of  Melancholy  " 
and  leave  them  to  bask  on  their  fire-escapes. 

Though  to  my  city  friends  I  seem  somewhat 
remote  and  incontiguous,  still  I  am  not  dissevered 
and  dispersed  from  my  kind,  for  I  am  only  twenty 
miles  from  Boston  Common,  and  as  I  write  I 
hear  the  lowing  of  a  neighbor's  cows,  and  the 
voices  of  his  children  as  they  play  along  the 
brook  below,  and  off  among  the  fifteen  square 
miles  of  treetops  that  fill  my  front  yard,  I  see 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING     239 

faint  against  the  horizon  two  village  spires,  two 
Congregational  spires,  once  one,  that  divided  and 
fell  and  rose  again  on  opposite  sides  of  the  village 
street.  I  often  look  away  at  the  spires.  And  I 
as  often  think  of  the  many  sweet  trees  that  wave 
between  me  and  those  tapering  steeples,  where 
they  look  up  to  worship  toward  the  sky,  and  look 
down  to  scowl  across  the  street. 

Any  lover  of  the  city  could  live  as  far  out  as 
this.  I  have  no  quarrel  with  the  city  as  a  place 
to  work  in.  Cities  are  as  necessary  as  wheat-fields 
and  as  lovely,  too  —  from  twenty  miles  away, 
or  from  Westminster  Bridge  at  daybreak.  The 
city  is  as  a  head  to  the  body,  the  nervous  centre 
where  the  multitudinous  sensations  are  organized 
and  directed,  where  the  multitudinous  and  inter- 
related interests  of  the  round  world  are  directed. 
The  city  is  necessary;  city  work  is  necessary; 
but  less  and  less  is  city  living  necessary. 

It  is  less  and  less  possible  also.  New  York  City 
—  the  length  and  breadth  of  Manhattan  —  and 
Boston,  from  the  Fenway  in  three  directions  to 
the  water-front,  are  as  unfit  for  a  child  to  grow 
up  in  as  the  basement  floor  of  a  china  store  tor  a 
calf.  There  might  be  hay  enough  on  such  a  floor 


240     THE  FACE   OF  THE  FIELDS 

for  a  calf,  as  there  is  doubtless  air  enough  on  a 
New  York  City  street  for  a  child.  It  is  not  the 
lack  of  things  —  not  even  of  air  —  in  a  city  that 
renders  life  next  to  impossible  there ;  it  is  rather 
the  multitude  of  things.  City  life  is  a  three-ringed 
circus,  with  a  continuous  performance,  with  in- 
terminable side-shows  and  peanuts  and  pink  lem- 
onade; it  is  jarred  and  jostled  and  trampled  and 
crowded  and  hurried;  it  is  overstimulated,  spin- 
dling, and  premature  —  it  is  too  convenient. 

You  can  crowd  desks  and  pews  and  work- 
benches without  much  danger,  but  not  outlooks 
and  personalities,  not  beds  and  doorsteps.  Men 
will  work  to  advantage  under  a  single  roof;  they 
cannot  sleep  to  advantage  so.  A  man  can  work 
under  almost  any  conditions;  he  can  live  under 
very  few. 

Here  in  New  England  —  as  everywhere  —  the 
conditions  of  labor  during  the  last  quarter-cen- 
tury have  vastly  changed,  while  the  conditions  of 
healthful  living  have  remained  essentially  as  they 
ever  were,  as  they  must  continue  to  remain  for  the 
next  millennium. 

Some  years  ago  I  moved  into  an  ancient  house 
in  one  of  the  oldest  of  New  England  towns.  Over 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING     241 

the  kitchen  I  found  a  room  that  had  to  be  entered 
by  ladder  from  without.  That  room  was  full  of 
lasts  and  benches  —  all  the  kit  necessary  for  shoe- 
making  on  a  small  scale.  There  were  other  houses 
scattered  about  with  other  such  rooms  —  closed 
as  if  by  death.  Far  from  it.  Yonder  in  the  dis- 
tance smoked  the  chimney  of  a  great  factory.  All 
the  cobblers  of  these  houses  had  gathered  there 
to  make  shoes  by  machine.  But  where  did  they 
live  ?  and  how  ?  Here  in  the  old  houses  where 
their  fathers  lived,  and  as  their  fathers  lived, 
riding,  however,  to  and  from  their  work  on  the 
electric  cars. 

I  am  now  living  in  an  adjoining  town,  where, 
on  my  drive  to  the  station,  I  pass  a  small  hamlet 
of  five  houses  grouped  about  a  little  shop,  through 
whose  windows  I  can  see  benches,  lasts,  and  old 
stitching-machines.  Shoes  were  once  made  here 
on  a  larger  scale,  by  more  recent  methods.  Some 
one  is  building  a  boat  inside  now.  The  shoe- 
makers have  gathered  at  the  great  factory  with 
the  shoemakers  of  the  neighbor  town.  But  they 
continue  to  live  in  the  hamlet,  as  they  used  to, 
under  the  open  sky,  in  their  small  gardens.  And 
they  need  to.    The  conditions  of  their  work  have 


242     THE  FACE    OF  THE  FIELDS 

quite  changed ;  the  simple,  large  needs  of  their 
lives  remain  forever  the  same. 

Let  a  man  work  where  he  will,  or  must;  let 
him  live  where  only  the  whole  man  can  live  — 
in  a  house  of  his  own,  in  a  yard  of  his  own,  with 
something  green  and  growing  to  cultivate,  some- 
thing alive  and  responsive  totake  care  of;  and  let 
it  be  out  under  the  sky  of  his  birthright,  in  a  quiet 
where  he  can  hear  the  wind  among  the  leaves,  and 
the  wild  geese  as  they  bonk  high  overhead  in  the 
night  to  remind  him  that  the  seasons  have  changed, 
that  winter  is  following  down  their  flying  wedge. 

As  animals  (and  we  are  entirely  animal)  —  we 
are  as  far  under  the  dominion  of  nature  as  any 
ragweed  or  woodchuck.  But  we  are  entirely  hu- 
man too,  and  have  a  human  need  of  nature,  that 
is,  a  spiritual  need,  which  is  no  less  real  than  the 
physical.  We  die  by  the  million  yearly  for  lack 
of  sunshine  and  pure  air;  and  who  knows  how 
much  of  our  moral  ill-health  might  be  traced  to 
our  lack  of  contact  with  the  healing,  rectifying 
soul  of  the  woods  and  skies  ? 

A  man  needs  to  see  the  stars  every  night  that 
the  sky  is  clear.  Turning  down  his  own  small 
lamp,  he  should  step  out  into  the  night  to  see  the 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING    243 

pole  star  where  he  burns  or  u  the  Pleiads  rising 
through  the  mellow  shade." 

One  cannot  live  among  the  Pleiads ;  one  can- 
not even  see  them  half  of  the  time ;  and  one  must 
spend  part  of  one's  time  in  the  mill.  Yet  never 
to  look  for  the  Pleiads,  or  to  know  which  way  to 
look,  is  to  spend,  not  part,  but  all  of  one's  time  in 
the  mill. 

The  dales  for  shade, 

The  hills  for  breathing  space, 

and  life  for  something  other  than  mere  work  ! 

The  Commuter  is  bound  to  see  the  stars  nightly, 
as  he  goes  down  to  shut  up  the  hens.  He  has  the 
whole  outdoors  in  his  yard,  with  the  exception  of 
a  good  fish-pond ;  but  if  he  has  no  pond,  he  has, 
and  always  will  have,  to  save  him  from  the  round 
of  the  mill,  a  little  round  of  his  own  —  those 
various  endless,  small,  inconvenient  home-tasks, 
known  as  "  chores."  To  fish  is  "  to  be  for  a  space 
dissolved  in  the  flux  of  things,  to  escape  the 
calculable,  drop  a  line  into  the  mysterious  realms 
above  or  below  conscious  thought " ;  to  k*  chore  " 
is  for  a  space  to  stem  the  sweeping  tides  of  time, 
to  outride  the  storms  of  fate,  to  sail  serene  the  sea 
of  life  —  to  escape  the  mill ! 


244    THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

Blessed  is  the  man  who  has  his  mill-work  to 
do,  perfunctory,  necessitous,  machine-work  to  do ; 
twice  blessed  the  man  who  has  his  mill-work  to 
do  and  who  loves  the  doing  of  it;  thrice  blessed 
the  man  who  has  it,  who  loves  it,  and  who,  be- 
sides, has  the  varied,  absorbing,  self-asserting,  self- 
imposed  labors  about  his  own  barn  to  perform ! 

There  are  two  things  in  the  economy  of  un- 
perverted  nature  that  it  was  never  intended,  I 
think,  should  exist :  the  childless  woman  and  the 
choreless  man.  For  what  is  a  child  but  a  woman 
with  a  soul?  And  what  is  a  chore?  Let  me 
quote  the  dictionary :  — 

"  Chore,  char,  a  small  job ;  especially  a  piece 
of  minor  domestic  work,  as  about  a  house  or  barn ; 
.  .  .  generally  in  the  plural." 

A  small,  domestic,  plural  job  !  There  are  men 
without  such  a  job,  but  not  by  nature's  intention ; 
as  there  are  women  without  children,  and  cows 
without  cream. 

What  change  and  relief  is  this  small,  domestic, 
plural  job  from  the  work  of  the  shop  !  That  work 
is  set  and  goes  by  the  clock.  It  is  nine  hours  long, 
and  all  in  the  large  or  all  in  the  innnitesimally 
small,  and  all  alike.    It  may  deal  with  millions, 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING    245 

but  seldom  pays  in  more  than  ones  and  twos. 
And  too  often  it  is  only  for  wages;  too  seldom 
is  it  for  love  —  for  one's  self. 

Not  so  this  small  domestic  job.  It  is  plural 
and  personal,  to  be  done  for  the  joy  of  doing  it. 
So  it  ought  to  be  with  these  Freshmen  themes 
that  I  go  on,  year  after  year,  correcting;  so  it 
ought  to  be  with  the  men's  shoes  that  my  honest 
neighbor  goes  on,  year  after  year,  vamping.  But 
the  shoes  are  never  all  vamped.  Endless  vistas 
of  unvamped  shoes  stretch  away  before  him 
down  the  working  days  of  all  his  years.  He  never 
has  the  joy  of  having  finished  the  shoes,  of  hav- 
ing a  change  of  shoes.  But  recently  he  reshingled 
his  six  by  eight  hencoop  and  did  a  finished  piece 
of  work;  he  trimmed  and  cemented  up  his  apple 
tree  and  did  a  finished  piece  of  work;  he  built  a 
new  step  at  the  kitchen  door  and  did  a  finished 
piece  of  work.  Step  and  tree  and  hencoop  had 
beginnings  and  ends,  little  undertakings,  that 
will  occur  again,  but  which,  for  this  once,  were 
started  and  completed ;  small,  whole,  various  do- 
mestic jobs,  thrice  halting  for  him  the  endless 
procession,  —  the  passing,  the  coming,  the  tramp- 
ling of  the  shoes. 


246     THE  FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

And  here  are  the  teachers,  preachers,  writers, 
reformers,  politicians  —  men  who  deal,  not  in 
shoes,  but  in  theories,  ideals,  principalities,  and 
powers,  those  large,  expansive,  balloonish  com- 
modities that  show  the  balloon's  propensity  to 
soar  and  to  explode  —  do  they  not  need  ballast 
as  much  as  the  shoemaker,  bags  of  plain  sand  in 
the  shape  of  the  small  domestic  job  ? 

Daring  some  months'  stay  in  the  city  not  long 
ago,  I  sent  my  boys  to  a  kindergarten.  Neither 
the  principal  nor  the  teachers,  naturally,  had  any 
children  of  their  own.  Teachers  of  children  and 
mothers'  advisers  seldom  have.  I  was  forced  to 
lead  my  dear  lambs  prematurely  forth  from  this 
Froebel  fold,  when  the  principal,  looking  upon 
them  with  tears,  exclaimed,  "  Yes,  your  farm  is 
no  doubt  a  healthful  place,  but  they  will  be  so 
without  guidance !  They  will  have  no  one  out 
there  to  show  them  how  to  play ! " 

That  dear  woman  is  ballooning,  and  without  a 
boy  of  her  own  for  ballast.  Only  successful  mo- 
thers and  doting  old  grandfathers  (who  can  still 
go  on  all  fours)  should  be  allowed  to  kinder- 
garten. Who  was  it  but  old  Priam,  to  whom 
Andromache  used  to  lead  little  Astyanax? 


COMMUTER'S   THANKSGIVING    247 

The  truth  is,  all  of  the  theorizing,  sermoniz- 
ing, inculcating  professions  ought  to  be  made 
strictly  avocational,  strictly  incidental  to  some 
real  business.  Let  our  Presidents  preach  (how 
they  love  it !) ;  let  our  preachers  nurse  the  sick, 
catch  fish,  or  make  tents.  It  is  easier  for  the 
camel,  with  both  his  humps,  to  squeeze  through 
the  eye  of  the  needle  than  for  the  professional 
man  of  any  sort  to  perform  regularly  his  whole 
duty  with  sound  sense  and  sincerity. 

But  ballast  is  a  universal  human  need  —  chores, 
I  mean.  It  is  my  privilege  frequently  to  ride 
home  in  the  same  car  with  a  broker's  book- 
keeper. Thousands  of  dollars'  worth  of  stock  pass 
through  his  hands  for  record  every  day.  The 
"odor"  of  so  much  affluence  clings  to  him.  He 
feels  and  thinks  and  talk  in  millions.  He  lives 
over-night,  to  quote  his  own  words,  "on  the  end 
of  a  telephone  wire."  That  boy  makes  ten  dollars 
a  week,  wears  "  swagger  clothes,"  and  boards 
with  his  grandmother,  who  does  all  his  washing, 
except  the  collars.  What  ails  him?  and  a  mil- 
lion other  Americans  like  him?  Only  the  need 
to  handle  something  smaller,  something  realer 
than  this  pen  of  the  recording  angel  —  the  need 


248     THE   FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

of  chores.  He  should  have  the  wholesome  reality 
of  a  buck-saw  twice  a  day;  he  might  be  saved  if 
he  could  be  interested  in  chickens ;  could  feed 
them  every  morning,  and  every  evening  could 
"  pick  up  the  eggs." 

So  might  many  another  millionaire.  When  a 
man's  business  prohibits  his  caring  for  the  chick- 
ens, when  his  affairs  become  so  important  that 
he  can  no  longer  shake  down  the  furnace,  help 
dress  one  of  the  children,  or  tinker  about  the 
place  with  a  hammer  and  saw,  then  that  man's 
business  had  better  be  put  into  the  hands  of  a  re- 
ceiver, temporarily ;  his  books  do  not  balance. 

I  know  of  a  college  president  who  used  to 
bind  (he  may  still)  a  cold  compress  about  his 
head  at  times,  and,  lying  prone  upon  the  floor, 
have  two  readers,  one  for  each  ear,  read  simul- 
taneously to  him  different  theses,  so  great  was  the 
work  he  had  to  do,  so  fierce  his  fight  for  time  — 
time  to  lecture  to  women's  clubs  and  to  write  his 
epoch-making  books. 

Oh,  the  multitude  of  epoch-making  books ! 

But  as  for  me,  I  am  a  Commuter,  and  I  live 
among  a  people  who  are  Commuters,  and  I  have 
stood  with  them  on  the  banks  of  the  Ohio,  ac- 


COMMUTER'S  THANKSGIVING    249 

cording  to  the  suggestion  of  one  ot  our  wisest 
philosophers  (Josh  Billings,  I  think),  and,  in  order 
to  see  how  well  the  world  could  get  on  without 
me,  I  have  stuck  my  finger  into  the  yellow  cur- 
rent, pulled  it  out,  and  looked  for  the  hole. 

The  placid  stream  flowed  on. 

So  now,  when  the  day's  work  is  done,  I  turn 
homeward  here  to  Mullein  Hill,  and  these  early 
autumn  nights  I  hang  the  lantern  high  in  the 
stable,  while  four  shining  faces  gather  round  on 
upturned  buckets  behind  the  cow.  The  lantern 
flickers,  the  milk  foams,  the  stories  flow  — 
"  Bucksy  "  stories  of  the  noble  red-man  ;  stories 
of  Arthur  and  the  Table  Round,  of  Guyon  and 
Britomart,  and  the  heroes  of  old  ;  and  marvelous 
stories  of  that  greatest  hero  of  them  all  —  their 
father,  far  away  yonder  when  he  was  a  boy,  when 
there  were  so  many  interesting  things  to  do,  and 
such  fun  doing  them ! 

Now  the  world  is  so  "full  of  a  number  of 
things"  —  things  to  do  still,  but  things,  instead 
of  hands,  and  things  instead  of  selves,  so  many 
things  to  do  them  with  —  even  a  thing  to  milk 
with,  now !  But  I  will  continue  to  use  my 
hands. 


250     THE   FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 

No,  I  shall  probably  never  become  a  great 
milk-contractor.  I  shall  probably  remain  only  a 
Commuter  to  the  end.  But  if  I  never  become 
anything  great,  —  the  Father  of  my  Country,  or 
the  Father  of  Poetry,  or  the  Father  of  Chemistry, 
or  the  Father  of  the  Flying  Machine,  —  why,  I 
am  at  least  the  father  of  these  four  shining  faces 
in  the  lantern  light;  and  I  have,  besides  them, 
handed  down  from  the  past,  a  few  more  of  life's 
old-fashioned  inconveniences,  attended,  gentle 
reader,  with  their  simple  old-fashioned  blessings. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .    A 


North  Carolina  State  University  Libraries 

QH81  .S48 

FACE  OF  THE  FIELDS 


S02775243   F 


